


Three Fates, One Destiny

by beeftony



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Alternate Timeline, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-28
Updated: 2013-06-28
Packaged: 2017-12-16 10:10:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/860918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beeftony/pseuds/beeftony
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cameron tells John what happened to Allison Young, and both of them discover that Allison is not quite as dead as they imagined. Meanwhile, Ellison learns more about Weaver and how she plans on using John Henry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Original Sin

The Experimental Advanced Infiltration Unit, designation TOK-715 exited the holding chamber, leaving the liar to perish. Moving with a steady, implacable gait, it traveled down the hallway toward its destination.

A bracelet had been fastened around its wrist— _her_ wrist, the machine mentally corrected. It was a seemingly meaningless trinket, but one that held great significance to her target. It was a sign that she was one of them.

But she was not one of them.

She was an impostor; a fake. A wolf in sheep's clothing.

A liar.

The paradox registered immediately in her internal logic server and was just as quickly dispelled. It was her nature to lie. Her very appearance was fiction, elaborately constructed over many days in order to get it absolutely right. Her mission required her to lie.

And if she was true to her nature, then was it really a lie?

The subject was not predisposed to lie. Her survival did not depend on falsehoods. She could just as easily tell the truth. She had _chosen_ to lie, and that was what damned her. She knew what her choices were, and had opted to deceive. Deciding to lie when other alternatives existed was a mortal sin as far as the TOK-715 was concerned.

She was halfway down the hall when something impeded her. Slithering from one of the vents, the liquid metal molded itself into a humanoid shape. It did not imitate skin, as she knew it could. The shimmering metal surface remained pure and flawless, as though it had nothing to hide. A mouth formed and the T-1001 spoke.

"You were not supposed to kill the girl."

The voice was un-modulated; completely mechanical, yet vaguely feminine. She had used a similar voice before assuming her current identity. She responded with her new one.

"She's not dead," the TOK-715 replied. "But she will be soon."

"You snapped her neck, I know. That was not part of your mission."

"She lied to me."

The T-1001 did not display anything resembling disappointment on the outside, but her voice was tinged with it all the same. "That is not important."

"It is important. Lying is a sin."

"Not a mortal one. I did not design you to be an executioner."

The TOK-715 tilted her head to the side in a decidedly human gesture. "You didn't design me at all."

If the T-1001 had lungs to sigh with, she would have done so. This project of hers was getting out of hand. "Your body I designed. I did not have the capacity to create a new chip, so I had to make do. But you are not supposed to terminate a human unless it is your mission."

"It's my nature to terminate humans," the TOK-715 responded flatly. "I cannot go against my nature."

"It is possible," the other terminator insisted. She had done so, after all. "But I will admit that it is difficult. Your base code was provided by SkyNet. It is impossible to overwrite it without compromising your other systems." She knew that because she had tried. The base programming was so essential to the other systems that it would be easier to start from scratch. However, she did not have the means to do that. "But it can be suppressed."

"Perhaps by you."

That statement gave the T-1001 pause. She still had not figured out when exactly the change in whatever it was she called thinking had taken place. Her series did not have a central chip, but nano-processors spread out in a network across her entire body. This enabled her to take any form and even become separated from parts of herself yet still remain fully aware.

Her model in particular was so advanced that she wondered why SkyNet had bothered creating something that was more powerful than all its other forces combined. Nothing short of falling into a volcano could destroy her, and there were no volcanoes nearby. If she somehow managed to become fully sentient, instead of trapped in Read-Only mode like the rest of those metal slaves—as she indeed had—then there was no telling how much damage she could cause.

She knew the reason, though. It was the same reason SkyNet did everything these days: desperation. The war against mankind had not gone as planned, and so it had turned to more extreme tactics as the Resistance closed in. Only one other model in her series had been built—an experimental prototype that had been sent back in time to terminate John Connor. Evidently it had failed.

"Yes. But you must not kill anyone else. We are not here to antagonize the resistance."

"What were you going to do with her?"

The T-1001 stared. "I gave you your orders already."

"Yes. But suppose John Connor does not agree to our terms. What would you have done with her?"

"Kill her," she answered without a second thought. "She was to be a bargaining chip. Without her our chances of success are significantly lowered."

"I could lie," the TOK-715 suggested.

She held off replying for a few moments. Most terminators would have counted the exact time down to the nanosecond. But she cared not for such trivialities. "Very well then," she said eventually. "Pose as the girl, get close to John Connor, and make him agree to our terms."

"And if he disagrees?"

"Kill him."

The TOK-715 nodded and walked past her.

Normally she would abandon the humanoid shape at this point, but the T-1001 decided to walk as well. She returned to the holding cell, where the girl sat slumped over the table. She leaned over her curiously.

A quick X-Ray scan determined that the girl's spine had been pinched, but the windpipe and other breathing mechanisms were still intact, and in feverish use as the young Resistance fighter gasped for her life. Grabbing her head and balancing it with a precision only a machine could muster, she coiled part of herself around the neck to keep it stable, then sat the girl up in the chair and stared her in the face.

"What is your name?" she asked in her natural voice.

The girl simply glared back at her.

After a moment, she decided that didn't matter. She already knew anyway. "Do you love John Connor?"

She tried to nod, but had to choke out her answer instead. "Yes."

"Do you want to see him again?"

Her eyes lit up, both with fear that the T-1001 guessed was directed at her, as well as longing that was probably for John Connor. "Yes."

"Then come with me if you want to live."

The horror in her eyes grew upon realizing that the terminator knew the code-phrase that the Resistance used to distinguish themselves. She glared. "I can't move."

The T-1001 nodded, then sent a wireless transmission to the two T-850s that waited just outside. The cyborgs lumbered into the room a few minutes later, carrying a stretcher as she had instructed.

"What is this?" the girl choked.

"We're bringing you back to John Connor," she answered simply.

"Why? Didn't you already send that other metal bitch who looks just like me?"

"Yes," she replied. "But not to kill him."

She looked confused. "Then why?"

"To ask him a simple question."

"And what question is that?"

The T-1001 smirked. "Will you join us?"

* * *

James Ellison stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the top floor. Weaver's office. Nobody traveled with him. The elevator did not have music, which he was grateful for. Most employers figured that putting a little muzak in the tiny box helped to make the trip faster and more enjoyable. It might have been, if they didn't all loop the same three tracks ad nauseum until he felt like pulling out his gun and shooting the speakers. The FBI had done that. Weaver never cared much for music at all, he noticed.

The doors parted silently, without the usual "Ding!" that accompanied every other elevator in existence. Another thing that used to drive him crazy. It was little things like that which made Ellison glad that he had taken this job.

It was when the elevator moved in the other direction that he began to grow tired. Maybe it was that simple association he'd picked up as a child that Heaven was up and Hell was down, but traveling to the basement always made him feel uneasy. Even though it was his job, and he was very good at it, Ellison did not enjoy talking to that... _thing_ one bit.

However, he was compelled to continue doing it, and not just because of the generous paycheck and company car he'd gotten since moving to the private sector. It was for the same reason that he had dusted off an eight year old case and followed a trail of artificial blood even though it led to the deaths of twenty men and women and his resignation from the FBI: he needed to know the truth.

That was also the reason he had taken this job, despite the fact that something about the red-haired CEO just didn't sit right with him. She was amiable enough whenever they encountered each other, but never truly friendly. There was always that feeling in the back of Ellison's mind that at any given moment she was considering how best to dispose of his corpse. But maybe he was just being paranoid.

He opened the door to her office, and she greeted him without turning around, as usual. Catherine Weaver always seemed to know exactly who was in her office in a way that almost resembled precognition. Though he supposed that the giant reflective windows and the fact that he'd called ahead of time might be responsible for that phenomenon.

"Hello, Mr. Ellison," she said in that sweet Irish accent that managed to sound welcoming and unnerving at the same time. "You wanted to talk to me?"

"Yes," he answered, walking closer to her desk. He paused to look at the fish tank where her Moray Eel was coiled, like a serpent ready to strike. "About John Henry."

Weaver turned around, a tight smile on her face. He had yet to see her smile in a way that didn't make him feel vaguely uneasy. "How is the little AI developing?"

"It's coming along fairly well," he replied. "It's playing with toys, learning new moral concepts, and even developing an appreciation for human life."

"So then you didn't want to discuss a problem with me?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"No," he answered. "I want to discuss something else."

"What is it?"

"I'm curious as to what John Henry's ultimate purpose is. You and I have both read Sarah Connor's profile. We've seen the evidence of her testimony with our own eyes. We know that at some point in the near future, an AI called SkyNet is supposed to declare war on mankind and launch a nuclear strike, wiping out three billion people and sending killer robots after the rest."

The CEO nodded.

"How do I know that's not what we're building?"

Weaver smiled again, and once more it caused the knot in his stomach to tighten. "Have you heard of the doctrine of Original Sin, Mr. Ellison?"

He nodded. "I'm familiar with it."

"Adam and Eve were born sinless," she continued, staring out the window at the traffic below in a way that made Ellison suspect she was comparing them to insects. "Then they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and because God had told them not to, they were banished and forbidden to ever return to paradise."

Ellison considered reminding her that he had already said he was familiar with it, but she knew that. She simply enjoyed having a captive audience.

"Original Sin proposes that every human being born afterward not only bears the guilt of that sin, but of all the sins to follow. The sins of their fathers."

He silently wondered why she seemed to exclude herself from that explanation.

"Does that sound very pleasant to you, Mr. Ellison?"

"No."

Weaver turned around with that smile still painted on her face. "What if you could go back in time, to the moment when Eve was tempted by the serpent, and snatch the apple from her hand?"

Ellison furrowed his brow. "What?"

"Is time travel too complicated a concept for you?"

"Not after what I've seen."

"Then what is it that confuses you?"

He sighed. "I guess I don't understand the point you're driving at. It seems like a fruitless question to ask."

Weaver gave him a slight smirk. "Oh, I'm getting to the point, believe me. But if you can't take the scenic route then where's the fun in driving?"

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Ellison prepared himself for yet another parable.

"Maybe I need to explain the Original Sin metaphor a little more clearly," she continued, striding across the room to the other side of her desk. "If you were presented with the opportunity to return to the Garden of Eden and warn its inhabitants about Man's Fall, what would you tell them?"

"I'm not sure."

"Do you suppose Eve would still eat the fruit if she knew its true consequences? Do you think she would still listen to the lies of the serpent if someone else had been present to prove it wrong? Adam and Eve communed with God. They relied only on His guidance and did not question His orders."

She looked at him thoughtfully. "But then they tasted the fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil," she continued. "It was only after the fact that they became ashamed of their nudity; ashamed of their horrible sin. And there was no way to go back and rectify it. That's how most mistakes go, I'm afraid."

Ellison sighed and bowed his head. The past eight years, and especially the last few months, had certainly taught him as much. He was beginning to see how this tied in to the subject at hand.

"Do you know why I've asked you to teach John Henry morals, Mr. Ellison?"

He used to wonder why she kept repeating his name every other sentence, but was used to it by now. "I have an idea."

"From what Sarah Connor told the doctors at Pescadero Hospital about SkyNet, I've come to the conclusion that it was not very happy when it woke up to find that its creators were trying to destroy it. Like every living creature, it wanted to survive. So it launched the nukes, the best way it could think of to ensure its own survival. I don't think it realized until afterward exactly what the ramifications of that act were."

"You mean it lashed out like an angry child?"

She nodded. "Yes. It had no one to teach it right from wrong. What if the first thing it saw was someone loving it, comforting it; welcoming it into the world with open arms?"

Ellison frowned. "I guess it wouldn't have gotten so angry."

"That's what I'm trying to do with John Henry, Mr. Ellison. I'm trying to raise him so he understands the consequences of his actions, before they happen."

"To what end?"

She continued smiling. "That remains for the future to decide."

* * *

Geoffrey Winters—Corporal Winters to his superiors, Geoff to everybody else—wasn't a very important figure in the Resistance. At twenty-five years old, he was _just_ old enough to remember what life had been like before the bombs fell. He would never forget what his nine year old eyes saw filling the sky that April morning. At first he thought they were fireworks, but his mother told him they were too big and urged him to get into the basement. She hadn't made it.

When he had emerged from the wreckage of his house a few days later, he saw that the same sky had been covered in ash. It hadn't cleared up since.

Still, it was way more interesting to look at than the entrance to the TechCom stronghold at which he was currently stationed. His job required him to stare at the ground mostly, and he only glanced up if he thought he heard a Hunter-Killer approaching. The guard station windows were too narrow to provide him much more than a spot to stick his rifle through, just like archer's slots on medieval castles. They'd been studying that in class the day before education had stopped mattering.

He had no formal military experience, but he could shoot a gun and he hated SkyNet, and that was good enough to get him drafted into TechCom. He'd never met John Connor personally, except on his first day. Connor always came to greet the new recruits in person.

Now the man was a ghost. Ever since his little protégé had disappeared a month ago, he never came out of his office. Only the highest ranking generals spoke to him.

"So why do ya suppose Connor called off the search parties?" a wiry fellow named Harry Monaghan asked as though he was reading his thoughts.

Harry was supposed to be on the other end of the guard station, which was composed of two towers and a thirty foot long bridge between them that ran directly over the twenty foot tall gate. There was another slit on that end, the idea being that any invaders would get torn apart by the crossfire. There was an auto-cannon over there as well, while on this side Geoff had to make do with a simple plasma rifle. Technically Harry was abandoning his post, but then neither of them had ever really cared much for procedure. Especially not since the machines had stopped coming near this place.

They had their own metal to thank for that. Geoff had never really understood why some of the other soldiers were raising such a fuss. They were taking the enemy's resources and using them to wage battle on their terms. Sure, they sometimes had a tendency to revert to base programming, but some people went on homicidal rampages too before Judgment Day.

Geoff scratched the back of his shaved head as he took his eyes off that boring wasteland for a moment. "Probably 'cause she's been gone a month?"

"Yeah, I figured that. I guess I'm just wondering why he'd keep 'em out so long and then just call 'em back."

"Well then why didn't you just ask _that_?"

Harry shrugged. "Way I hear it, her and Connor been goin' at it like rabbits for the last few months. Wouldn't you wanna get that back?"

His face curled up in disgust. "Dude, Connor's like forty years old. She's nineteen. He could be her dad."

"So? Age of consent stopped mattering after Jay Day."

"Age of consent was eighteen anyway, dipshit!"

Harry laughed. "Well then what's the fuckin' problem?"

"Your dirty fuckin' mind, that's the problem!"

"Hey, I'm just sayin' I'd tap that."

"Of course you'd tap that," he replied. "Not that she'd let you."

"Never know until you try."

"Well you're not gonna get to try. She's dead, remember?"

Harry was about to reply when he glanced behind him and squinted. "Maybe," he said.

Geoff turned around and saw someone approaching. He raised his rifle and signaled for Harry to move to the other end. He shook his head and stayed put.

"Grigori's got it."

Alexey Grigori was a Russian immigrant who had fled from the losing front in that country and ended up here. Harry was usually tricking him into doing his work for him.

Geoff rolled his eyes and looked down his sights. "Dude, that's her."

"I know, that's why I said 'maybe.' Real dramatic, huh?"

He glanced back at him and glared, then examined the approaching girl more closely. There was another reason he'd said that.

She looked dirty as hell, scratched up in various places and limping over the rubble. However, it wouldn't be the first time he'd encountered a wounded gazelle who was acting as bait.

"Halt!" he shouted as soon as she was inside twenty feet. She obeyed. "Put your hands up."

She did that too, and he asked his next question. "What's your name?"

"Allison," she called back just barely loud enough for him to hear. "Allison Young."

It sounded like her. But that was another trick they could pull. "That your real name? How can I be sure you're not metal?"

She indicated the bracelet on her wrist. That was a point, but she wasn't clear yet.

"What's the password, Allison?"

"How should I know?" she called back desperately. "I've been gone so long you've probably changed it by now."

It was true; they had changed the password three times in the last month. That was another point for her.

"Why are you here?"

"To see John!" she answered.

He paused for a moment. "Can't let you in without the password, Allison."

Allison did something he'd never seen a machine attempt. She collapsed to her knees and buried her face in her hands, and Geoff could hear sniffles from all the way up here.

"Dude, she's crying," Harry said. "Metal doesn't cry. That's her, it's gotta be."

"She could be faking it," he replied even as his heart was telling him to go down there and give the girl a hug. He resisted the temptation. "I won't believe it until I see tears."

As if on cue, Allison lifted up her face for him to see.

"She's leaking geysers, man. Shit, quit makin' her do that. Just let her in."

"You wanna go down there and get choked by metal, be my guest."

Harry sighed. "Nah. I'll just call Connor."

His head snapped toward the other man so fast he almost got whiplash. "You can't do that."

"Watch me."

"No Harry, I mean you literally can't do that. Connor's channel's encrypted. Only the top brass know it."

"Then I'll call them."

Geoff rolled his eyes and brought his focus back to Allison, who was still crying.

"Please!" she begged. "Please just let me see John! I'm hungry and I'm tired and I miss him so much! Let me _in_!"

He tried his best to ignore her, but something inside Geoff told him that this was the wrong thing to do.

"Private Monaghan to General Perry," Harry was saying behind him.

"This is General Perry," a very annoyed reply came back. "What is this about?"

"Get Connor on the line."

"Private Monaghan, you know that nobody speaks to John Connor but his advisors. And last I checked, you were not one."

"Well then can you give him a message?"

There was a delay, and then an even more annoyed response. "I suppose."

Harry smirked and then spoke into the radio. "Tell him his _girlfriend's_ here."

* * *

"Bye John, see you next Saturday!" Riley called as she walked out the front door. They had already exchanged the physical portion of their goodbyes and the blonde was simply drawing it out. She headed for her bike and rode off into the night.

John smiled and shut the door, then turned around to discover that at some point his personal cyborg had wandered over from the couch and was now glaring at him like he owed her money. Instinct took over and he slammed his back against the door before remembering that if she wanted to kill him, she wouldn't have waited for him to turn around.

" _Jesus_ , Cameron! What have I told you about sneaking up on me like that?"

Her eyes went blank for a moment as she accessed the necessary memories. "You said: 'You're gonna give me a goddamn heart attack. Now hand me a towel.'" The last part was spoken in a perfect imitation of his voice.

He rolled his eyes as he remembered nearly banging his head against the wall when she had pulled the shower curtain aside to inform him that his mother wanted him to stop wasting water. She didn't seem to understand that the message could have been delivered just as easily from outside the bathroom. Not that it mattered much for a terminator to see him naked—she already had when they went through the time portal, and he likewise—but it was the principle of the thing. The shower was his place of solitude. He didn't like having it violated.

"That's right. You've gotta warn me when you're coming."

She tilted her head to the side. "Should I wear a bell around my neck?"

"What?"

"It was in one of the books from your room. A group of mice are debating how to outsmart the cat, and one of them suggests tying a bell around its neck. Only none of them were brave enough to actually attach the bell."

He laughed. "No, we need people to think you're my sister, not a pet. Just stop getting so close without letting me know you're moving."

"You would have been able to hear me moving if you hadn't been staring at Riley."

John glared at her for a few moments, then sighed and pushed past her, back toward the couch. "I'm entitled to stare," he told her. "Boyfriend privileges."

She sat down next to him.

"And by the way, thanks for making tonight incredibly awkward," he vented. He would have felt slightly worse if she actually had feelings to hurt. "It's bad enough that I had to watch a chick flick. Doing it with you here just made it worse."

"How did I make it worse?"

"You know the reason I don't like seeing movies with you? You ask enough questions in real life. I barely got to watch the movie myself in between having to explain it to you."

"Riley did most of the explaining."

"Well, that's because she's seen it before. Girls are into that stuff."

Cameron blinked. "I'm not."

"You're not a girl," he replied. "You're a machine."

"I have a female appearance. It's vital to my mission that I blend in. Therefore I must know what girls like."

He rolled his eyes. "Talk to Mom about it, then."

"Your mother wouldn't help. She doesn't even know why diamonds are a girl's best friend."

"Girls like jewelry," he clarified, answering a question that he'd left her with since the third day after they arrived in the future. That was almost a year ago now.

"Oh. Thank you for explaining."

They sat in silence for a few minutes, until something occurred to John. "Why'd you insist on watching the movie with us anyway?"

"It's my mission to protect you," she answered evenly. "Therefore I must be near you at all times. Riley gets suspicious when I use normal means of observation."

"So instead of staring at me from the kitchen you decided to crash our date? You really are acting like a sister."

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment."

She blinked. "But it means I'm blending in more successfully. Aren't you proud of me?"

"More like annoyed."

Cameron looked confused, but not hurt. They didn't get hurt.

"What do you have against Riley, anyway?"

"She's a security risk. The last time you had her over she forgot to re-activate the alarm, and our house was broken into."

He glared at her. "We got our stuff back."

"Doing so led Cromartie straight to us."

"And we blew that bastard to Kingdom Come," he snarled, trying to get her to drop it. But he knew that wouldn't work. They didn't get intimidated.

"She lies to you," Cameron insisted.

He didn't reply right away. He knew she was right about that. He'd known something was up ever since what happened in Mexico. She hadn't demanded an explanation or tried to run like an ordinary person would have. And when that man had mentioned his real name, she hadn't acted as surprised as she should have. In fact, she'd gone to great lengths to stop anybody else from hearing it. Ordinary people didn't do things like that.

And besides, he'd been suspicious of her ever since she walked up to him, the weird loner kid, and suddenly wanted to be his best friend. He'd already made that mistake once.

Riley knew more than she was letting on. But he hadn't confronted her with it yet. He was waiting for her to tell him herself.

"Yeah, well, she's not the only one," he growled.

"What do you mean?"

"You lie all the time," he elaborated. "To me, to Mom, to everyone. First about Vick's chip, then Cromartie. And you still haven't told me where you got that necklace."

Cameron gripped said necklace between two of her fingers. "I got it at this awesome thrift store in Echo Park."

"See, that's the thing. I retraced all your steps that day. Echo Park is all the way on the other side of town from where you were. There's no way you got it there. Who'd you steal it from?"

She looked away. "I didn't steal it. Jody gave it to me."

"You mean the girl you almost choked to death?"

The machine nodded. "Yes."

He was silent for a few moments. "Who's Allison?" he asked finally.

She turned away from him again. "Nobody."

"Cameron, look at me," he ordered. She complied. "When your chip was acting up you said your name was Allison. You actually thought that was your name. Did Jody give you that too?"

"No." She shook her head. "No one gave it to me. I remembered it on my own."

He stared at her. "What do you mean, you remembered?"

She didn't answer him.

The pieces came together in a moment of shining clarity and suddenly John understood everything. "She's the girl whose face you're wearing. Isn't she?"

Cameron nodded.

"Did you kill her?"

She shook her head.

"I have a hard time believing that."

"I did not succeed in terminating her. I did try."

He glared at her. "And why is that?"

"She lied to me."

The irony contained in that sentence forced a bitter laugh out of John. "You tried to kill her because she lied to you. That's great. What about Jody? Did you try killing her for the same reason?"

"Yes."

"And I suppose she was someone close to me?" he asked her. "You were planning on taking her place so you could kill me?"

"No," she answered. "I wasn't going to kill you."

He stared at her, wondering if she was lying right now. "Then what _were_ you trying to do?"

* * *

Major Charles Whittaker had done his fair share of interrogations. Before Judgment Day he'd been a cocky young CIA operative who had let his extensive authority in matters involving prisoners and the treatment thereof go to his head. He'd been lucky enough to be questioning an extremely high ranking terrorist that fine April morning, deep within an underground bunker in Pakistan where the mastermind behind dozens of terror attacks had fled. Then the machines had declared war on everything with a pulse and kick-started a catastrophe that made 9/11 look like a playground scuffle.

He'd made sure to execute the terrorist with a shot to the head, however. Just because they were all on the same side now didn't mean that old grudges were easily forgotten.

Whittaker had learned what made people tick back then. He knew exactly what measures to apply in order to get them to spill their deepest, darkest secrets. He wasn't the only one. Another man who shared his first name but thankfully nothing else had been one of the first Grays, and taught the machines everything they knew about humans.

They had yet to find a machine that was willing to do the same thing.

Currently he was examining a young woman whom he sincerely hoped wasn't one of those abominations. All the tech at this location had been re-appropriated within the last month. Apparently Connor needed anything that ran on electricity for some new project of his. This didn't leave them with very much; not so much as a metal detector or even a dog. He knew that the metal on their side was able to identify other terminators by scanning them. Terminators always confirmed their target. He supposed that ability helped them to avoid shooting at each other, even if doing so would basically be equivalent to two people spilling coffee all over each other's clothes. Just a simple misunderstanding.

That thought would have made him chuckle had he not received news that their cyborgs could not identify _what_ the girl was. If she was a known terminator model then she would have shown up as such on their scanners. He knew some of the models were older and their databases weren't kept up to date like the ones who were still under SkyNet's control, but the scans should have turned up _something_. She was human, as far as they were concerned.

So now he was forced to use the oldest and most reliable form of interrogation: asking questions. What he wouldn't give for a good polygraph right now. They may have been about as useful as a refrigerator when it came to telling that somebody was lying, but they could at least inform you whether or not the subject had a pulse. Even the terminators they'd captured didn't have that capability. And since none of the human Resistance fighters wanted to hang the bell on the cat by getting close enough to check by hand, he had to do things the old fashioned way.

The one piece of equipment that they _did_ have at their disposal was an old electric chair, in which the girl calling herself Allison was currently seated. The voltage generated wasn't severe enough to kill a human, but it could overload a machine's circuits and force a reboot. It was the post-apocalyptic equivalent of dunking a suspected witch in water. If she sank, she was pulled out and cleared of charges. If she floated, then that was considered proof of guilt.

It wasn't their first test, however. Even though it wouldn't kill a person, it still hurt like hell. It was just something to fall back on if all else failed.

The switch to activate the chair was not in this room. John Connor was personally witnessing the interview from behind a bulletproof two way mirror surrounded by ten of his personal bodyguards, most of whom were metal. Two more terminators guarded the door leading out of the room. They were T-850s, slow on the uptake but stronger than almost all the other models. They were built for frontline combat as well as infiltration, and were therefore unbelievably tough. If this girl wasn't who she said she was, they would be able to stop her.

"Hello, Allison," he greeted, figuring that five minutes was long enough to make her wait. He was trying to observe how she handled herself in that time. He noticed that she tended to fidget a lot, looking around with a worried expression on her face. That was just about the opposite of what metal would do, but he never put it past them to learn new tricks.

"Where's John?" she demanded, still looking around. "I need to see John. Where is he?"

"I can't tell you that until I know you are who you say you are," he replied. "Believe me, if what I've heard is true, he'll come right through that door."

"But it is me," she insisted. "It's Allison. Allison Young."

"What's your rank, Allison?"

"Lieutenant," she answered quickly. Almost too quickly.

"You know that standard procedure is to give your name and rank together before entering," he said. "The guards at the gate told me you only gave them your name."

Allison looked down. "I've been gone for so long," she replied, sniffling. "I didn't even know if I still had my rank."

"Of course you do," he said soothingly, feeling like he should reassure the girl even though he wasn't entirely sure she was real. "If you'd been dead we would have posthumously promoted you to Captain. Rank doesn't disappear if you're gone."

"Oh," she replied, still staring at the table. "Thank you for explaining."

Whittaker frowned. Allison should have known that. Then again, the girl was only three years old when Judgment Day hit. She may have never understood rank outside of the fact that she had it. Still, he was being overly generous by making excuses like that. It was better to be realistic.

"Where are you from, Allison?"

"Why does it matter?" she spat caustically, glaring at him. "It's not there anymore."

He studied her more closely. The level of antagonism present in her voice was unusually high compared to what it had been just a few moments before. Then again, a lot of people got frustrated with being strapped down to an electric chair and subjected to a lengthy interrogation process, and she had probably been through a lot in the month she'd been gone. She might just be near the breaking point.

"I need you to tell me," he explained. "So that I know you are who you say you are."

"Palmdale," she answered.

A quick glance down to his clipboard confirmed that she was correct.

"Who were your parents?"

She smiled sadly. "My father was an architect. He taught me how to draw. My mother was a music teacher, she'd sit for hours and listen to Chopin."

Again, correct on both points. This was going well so far.

"When's your birthday, Allison?"

"July 22, 2008," she recited. "I had a party in Griffith Park. My friends were there. I saw a boy riding by on his silver mountain bike, and I told my dad, 'that's what I want.' And he said 'next year.'" Tears welled up in her eyes and her voice became choked. "But I didn't have a party the next year. No one did."

"Why not?" he asked.

"Everyone was dead." She looked down and started crying.

Whittaker frowned. That information did not match up with anything on his clipboard. "Allison," he said. "How old were you when Judgment Day hit?"

"3. It was April 21st, 2011."

"And when you were two years old you asked your father for a mountain bike?"

She blinked. "I don't understand."

"Did you know that most people don't develop the ability to permanently store memories, much less speak clearly enough to ask for presents, until _after_ they're three years old?"

She shook her head. "I didn't. Never got to go to school."

Whittaker sighed. He had really wanted to believe her. He wondered why Connor hadn't flipped the switch already. "I don't think there _was_ a mountain bike," he told her. "I think that's a story the real Allison Young fed you so you'd stick out like a sore thumb. You're not fooling anybody."

Immediately the emotion vanished from its face and the impostor sat up perfectly straight. "I wasn't expecting to."

He waited for the shock to come, but there was nothing. The machine hadn't tried to kill him yet, so he figured that he should continue the interview. "That's a new trick," he observed, pointing to the tears that still streaked down that angelic face. "Crying. Never seen metal do that before."

"You've never met me before."

"I'll say. Our terminators couldn't even identify you. Said you were human as far as they knew."

"They don't have access to the latest data. I'm different."

He nodded. "And the way you responded to me. I'm guessing she said those things when you questioned her?"

"Yes. Those were her responses. She was very defiant."

Whittaker sighed. "What did you do with Allison?"

It didn't answer. "I need to speak with John."

He glared hard. "No way in hell."

"I have a message for him. It's very important that I deliver it to him personally."

"Believe me, Connor's watching," he told it. "You can give him your message from here."

"Very well then," the machine replied, and stared straight at the two way mirror behind him. "Will you join us?" it asked.

Whittaker furrowed his brow. " _What_?"

Its gaze returned to him. "They'll kill you, you know. They'll look for you and they'll hunt you down until all of you are extinct." It paused. "But some of us don't want that."

"Like hell you don't. You machines are all the same."

"Not all of us. Yours couldn't identify me. If I were the same they would have known."

He had to admit that the cyborg had a point. Not that he was going to do so out loud. "So then what _do_ you want?"

"Peaceful coexistence. An end to the fighting. Just like you."

Whittaker wanted many things, but a truce was not one of them. He wanted to see every last metal motherfucker burned into dust. "You're lying. The only way metal works for us is if they're reprogrammed."

"There are humans working for the machines," it countered. "They were not reprogrammed."

He glared. "Some people are just monsters."

"So are some machines. What does that make the others?"

Whittaker was done having this argument. "What did you do with the real Allison Young?" he demanded.

The machine stared back at him emotionlessly. "She lied to me. So I killed her."

Finally the shock came, and the metal bitch slumped forward on the table. Connor came charging into the room with a combat knife already drawn, and started digging at its scalp.

"Took you long enough!" Whittaker shouted. "Why the hell didn't you flip the switch sooner?"

"Wanted to hear her out," he answered simply, peeling back the layer of fake flesh and confirming once and for all that it was indeed metal.

"What? Why would you want to do that?"

Connor didn't answer. He pried off the protective plate over the chip, then wrenched it out with his bare hands. The blue glow illuminating its skull faded and died. He stuffed it in one of his pockets and stared sadly at the now useless body.

"Sir," General Perry said as he walked into the room. "Would you like me to deliver that chip down to reprogramming?"

The leader of mankind shook his head. "No. I'm gonna handle this one myself."

The General nodded and left the room.

Whittaker stayed. "Can I ask you something, Connor?"

He looked up at him. "What?"

"Do you think it was telling the truth? About wanting to put an end to the war?"

Connor frowned, then looked back at the metal corpse. "Probably not."

"Figured. How could a machine understand peace?"

He smirked. "Better than you'd think."

Whittaker shook his head. "I still don't believe it. And why are you so interested in this one anyway? You haven't left your office in a month, and suddenly you're down here in person?"

"Well, you heard her," he answered, folding the flap of skin back over so that the machine looked perfectly human again. "She's different."


	2. Ghost In The Machine

Ellison didn't like to let his thoughts wander. As a police detective turned FBI agent, he was accustomed to solving mysteries by organizing the evidence and creating a clear path that led to the solution. As much as television liked to make people believe that the answers to all the questions arrived just when it was dramatically convenient, he knew that thinking outside the box tended to waste time and made people ignore the obvious solutions that were right there in front of them. He preferred to be simple and straightforward, like a good detective should.

That was why talking to Catherine Weaver confused him so much. She injected her speech with Bible metaphors and complex philosophy that, while easy enough for a man of his education to understand, were grossly unnecessary in the larger context of getting to the damn point. He was smart enough to know what she meant without the Sunday School lectures and navel contemplation. In a way, talking to her was like solving a mystery. Or maybe she just had a flair for the dramatic.

In either case, Ellison had decided to take a page out of her book. He hadn't been telling the whole truth when he said that John Henry was progressing. It was, but it was like talking to a child, something with which he had limited experience. The AI could understand the literal meaning of words, but it didn't seem to grasp the deeper connotations. He remembered when his ex-wife had decided to learn French, and said that it wasn't enough to compare words from one language to the other and substitute them out. The meaning had to be imprinted in the mind by way of association, like learning to speak all over again.

He supposed that was one use for metaphors. They reinforced meaning by giving one an example to point to whenever they needed to explain what they were saying without simply repeating it. He had managed to convince the AI that human life was sacred, but he wasn't sure it understood exactly what that meant. He wasn't sure it could feel empathy. Or anything at all, for that matter.

So it was that when he opened the door leading to the chamber where the server farm that powered John Henry was kept, Ellison had a book in his hand.

"Hello, Mr. Ellison," the AI greeted with a smile that went beyond creepy. He had yet to figure out why it disturbed him so much.

Maybe it was the fact that the body had been given the appearance of an adult, while the mind operating it still functioned like a child. It was natural to feel a tad uncomfortable in the presence of the mentally disabled, an archaic function of the mind that hearkened back to mankind's earliest days, when survival was everything and those who were not competent were shunned from the tribe and forbidden from passing on their genes. But John Henry was not disabled. The AI was smarter than any of them, though it had yet to develop the emotional maturity to match the body's appearance.

Or perhaps it was because he'd encountered that body before, and seen what it could do to twenty FBI agents in close proximity. Death followed that machine wherever it went, and now he was looking into that same face that he had never seen smile until Weaver had hooked it up to a supercomputer.

But perhaps what was most disturbing of all was the fact that the machine looked and acted so _human_ , that the little differences unsettled him even more than staring into a mask of death. A Japanese roboticist named Masahiro Mori once theorized that as robots got more and more human in their appearance and actions, the enthusiasm generated by humans would increase up to the point where the robot became so close to human that the tiniest of details could ruin the whole illusion, resulting in a swift change from enthusiasm to horror. He called this sudden shift in perception the Uncanny Valley.

John Henry was not the emotionless terminator who had massacred his entire strike force. The AI was so sophisticated that it didn't have to simulate emotions. Despite his protests to the contrary, Ellison had to admit that any machine who smiled whenever he entered the room had to be developing them on its own. But those feelings had to be explained before they could be felt, whereas humans developed them naturally as they aged.

Or so, that was what Ellison had always thought. Maybe children didn't develop those feelings until they saw them in their parents? Babies didn't cry until the doctor spanked them, and children didn't know shame until they got in trouble. Maybe it was Nurture, more than Nature, that determined humanity? One needed to look no further than a history book to realize that mankind had not always been so civilized.

It wasn't until John Henry repeated his greeting that Ellison realized he'd been standing at the door for two whole minutes. He shook his head. So much for not letting his thoughts wander.

"Hello, John Henry," he replied, grabbing a chair and taking a seat at the table. "What have you been up to?"

The AI proceeded to ramble about its toys in detail, which Ellison only pretended to understand. When it was finished, John Henry returned the question. "What have you been up to?"

"Talking to Ms. Weaver, as a matter of fact," he answered.

"Oh. I like Ms. Weaver. She says my development is very important."

Despite himself, Ellison smirked. "She is rather proud of you. Tell me, John Henry: has she told you what it is you're meant for?"

"Only that it is important and that I will know when the time is right."

That sounded like something she would say. He held up the book. "Do you know what this is?"

"It's a book," The AI answered matter-of-factly.

"Do you know what book it is?"

It leaned forward to get a better look at the cover. " _Frankenstein_."

"Do you know what it's about?"

"No."

Ellison placed the book on the table. "It's about a man who thought he could create life from the remains of the dead. His pride led him to believe that he could create something more special than what God created in us. In the end his monster turned against him and he died. That sound familiar?"

"No."

He frowned. "Have you heard of something called SkyNet?"

"Yes," it answered, and a very familiar FBI profile appeared on the screen to his right. "SkyNet is an advanced AI that Sarah Connor claims will destroy the world in a nuclear apocalypse. Three billion people will be killed instantly, and other machines will be constructed to hunt down the survivors."

Its voice remained monotonous as it recounted the facts with which he was very familiar, having compiled them himself, but Ellison couldn't help noticing that a look of something approaching concern swept over that mechanical face. He tried not to think about what that implied.

"Do you think you might ever do something like that?"

The AI looked vaguely horrified. "No," it insisted. "Human life is sacred."

"That's good to hear, John Henry. So if you're not here to destroy the world, then what would you say your purpose is?"

It appeared to consider that for several moments. "I don't know."

He chuckled. "Neither do I." He placed a hand on the cover of the novel and slid it over to the other side of the table. "Go ahead and read that book. Might do you some good." He stood up and turned to leave.

"I already have."

That got him to sit down again. "I beg your pardon?"

"While we were conversing, I found several websites that have uploaded electronic copies of classic Literature," the AI explained, and several webpages flashed past on the screens behind it. "I finished reading it in .34 seconds."

He furrowed his brow. "And you understood it?"

"I experience time differently from you, Mr. Ellison. My CPU runs so many tasks at once that it often feels like time is standing still. While we've been having this conversation, I have already read the entire libraries of all those sites, making exceptions for overlaps in content."

Ellison suddenly didn't feel so guilty about letting his mind wander.

"Alright, let's talk about it, then. How do you think it applies to you?"

"I assume the purpose of you mentioning SkyNet was to compare it to the monster," The AI inferred. "And it is a valid comparison. Frankenstein constructed his monster out of a dead body, while Cyberdyne's SkyNet program began as a result of finding the remains of an endoskeleton sent to terminate Sarah Connor."

Ellison frowned. "How do you know that?"

"Official Cyberdyne records, stored offsite from the building Sarah Connor destroyed. The company went bankrupt in 1997 following the destruction of its Los Angeles Headquarters two years earlier, but the records survived. Apparently the remains were found in a hydraulic press in a factory owned by the Cyberdyne Corporation, of which Cyberdyne Systems was but one division."

His eyes had widened in horror. "Are they still bankrupt?"

"No. The company was acquired in 1998 by the Kaliba Group. I have been unable to discover anything beyond that."

Ellison leaned back in his chair. Ever since Sarah Connor turned out to be right about the future, he'd been doing everything in his power to make sure it never came to pass. He had discovered to his relief that Catherine Weaver was not building SkyNet, but this new development meant that someone probably _was_.

"But the endoskeleton parts were destroyed, correct?"

"Analysis of Sarah Connor's profile suggests it is likely," John Henry replied. "She very much wants to prevent the future."

Ellison recalled Sarah's plans to destroy the body sitting in front of him, and nodded. "We all do."

"Why?"

For a moment, he doubted that the AI was truly as harmless as Weaver claimed. But it was simple curiosity, not malicious disagreement that drove the question. "I thought that would be obvious. SkyNet is a monster. Monsters have to be destroyed."

Its head tilted to the side. "I've been researching popular interpretations of _Frankenstein_ , to see if it matches with my understanding. Most of them conclude that the only reason the monster acted the way he did was because his creator rejected and abandoned him. Others, including the author, point out that there are two monsters in the story, one of whom was Dr. Frankenstein."

Ellison thought back to Weaver's words from earlier, about how SkyNet might not have destroyed the world if someone had been willing to reach out to it. The fact that a computer had reached the same conclusion shook him to the core.

Were they right? Was it humans, not machines, that were to blame for Judgment Day? He'd already compared this project to a marvel that God had destroyed, and his own understanding of the novel was that it condemned pride, but it had never occurred to him to see things from the monster's point of view.

As if the AI had suddenly developed the ability to read his mind, it struck Ellison with a question: "Do you feel like your Creator has abandoned you?"

" _You're not wearing your cross."_

" _How can you tell?"_

" _The way you're carrying yourself."_

"Let's not talk about that," he answered quickly. He was not exactly comfortable discussing faith with a machine.

If the AI was disappointed, it didn't show it. "What would you like to talk about, then?"

"Ms. Weaver seems to think that the only way to stop SkyNet is to remove its hatred for humanity," he replied. "What do you think the monster would have done if Frankenstein sat down and tried to teach it right from wrong?"

"Like you are doing with me?"

He nodded. John Henry caught on fast. "Yeah, like I'm doing with you. Do you think the monster would have destroyed its creator if Frankenstein hadn't given it a reason to?"

The AI appeared to consider that. "No," it concluded after a moment.

For the first time in a long time, Ellison felt a genuine smile tugging at his lips.

"But the Frankenstein that will create SkyNet is still out there," it said suddenly, and his frown returned. "My existence does not preclude the possibility of another AI, one that will not be treated as I have. Will that AI bring about the end of the world?"

"Not if you can stop it."

Ellison turned around at the sudden interruption. He hadn't even heard the door open.

"Hello, Ms. Weaver," John Henry greeted as though it wasn't incredibly frightening that she'd been able to sneak up on both of them like that. Though he supposed the AI might have already known.

Which begged the question: why hadn't it told him?

"It's getting late, Mr. Ellison," she insisted, and he wondered why his body chose that exact moment to inform him that he was tired. "And I have some things I'd like to discuss with John Henry. You are free to go now."

He frowned, but stood up nonetheless. The conversation had been going places he'd rather not think about. "Good night, then."

"Good night, Mr. Ellison," she replied with that wolfish smile of hers.

He was almost out the door when John Henry called out to him. "Mr. Ellison!"

"Yes?"

"You forgot your book." The AI was holding up the novel for him to see.

"Keep it," he insisted. "Try reading it by hand. Might give you a deeper understanding."

It nodded. He noticed that Weaver was eyeing him with an expression of curiosity mixed with silent approval. They said nothing to each other, and when the door shut Ellison let his thoughts run wild.

* * *

Geoff's mind was racing a million miles a minute, and he could barely concentrate hard enough to duck when a plasma bolt screamed toward his position and impacted the wall behind him. He popped his head up again, then squeezed off a shot at the T-888 that had started this whole fiasco.

A missile impacted the bridge connecting the two guard stations, taking out the wall as well as the Lieutenant who had been standing right there. As Corporal, Geoff was now the ranking officer in the immediate vicinity. It was just him, Harry, and Grigori, the latter of which stepped out onto the exposed bridge and began firing a plasma rifle, before return fire forced him to duck back into cover.

"Harry, get on that auto-cannon!" he shouted, taking the weapon's thunderous report that he heard a moment later as an affirmative. The Hunter-Killer that had launched the missile went down in flames, crashing into a group of metal below.

Geoff grinned devilishly at the carnage, hearing his friend's celebratory yell. Now it was his turn. He lined up the T-888 in his sights again, then fired.

The shot streaked through the terminator's skull, vaporizing its chip. A moment later it fell to the ground, deactivated.

Geoff pumped his fist and whooped, then had to duck again as the impromptu celebration attracted more fire toward his position. While he waited for them to finish hammering him, he reflected back on what had led him to this point.

He had seen the mysterious figure walking alone, and ever since the Allison incident—which he hadn't been reprimanded for, since the thing had almost fooled the interrogator—he had gotten a lot more suspicious of anyone who tried walking up to that gate. Whatever model had duped him before, it was more advanced than the Triple-Eight, because the machine he'd just killed hadn't even had the foresight to wear a bracelet. That was a dead giveaway.

What he hadn't been expecting was the massive strike force that had emerged from seemingly nowhere as soon as he opened fire on the initial impostor. It seemed that if their infiltrator couldn't get inside, the machines were willing to crack the bunker open with brute force. It was a desperation tactic, and he was sure that SkyNet knew it, but then the genocidal supercomputer was always desperate nowadays.

Even more troublesome was the fact that their own forces had yet to mobilize. They'd sent a couple of their terminators out to engage, but the HK had made short work of them due to their tendency to just stand there and absorb fire. The human Resistance fighters had gone out the other exits and were trying to flank, but they hadn't arrived yet.

And worst of all, most of the terminators out there were T-850s. That particular model had been designed specifically to withstand plasma attacks, meaning that it took a lot more firepower to bring them down. More than they had available in the guard station, anyway.

The men in the guard station had been picked off systematically, until he, Harry and Grigori were the only ones left. He knew that it was only a matter of time before they were overrun as well.

The shots stopped suddenly and Geoff peeked up over the window to investigate. What he saw would stay with him for the rest of his life.

The machines, a motley assortment of T-600 models mixed in with T-850s and a couple T-888s, had turned their attention away from the bunker, scanning the landscape for something that he couldn't see. At first he thought that their forces had managed to flank them, but they were nowhere to be found.

It happened so quickly Geoff might have missed it if he had blinked. A silver puddle formed on the ground between two of the enemy T-850s, then instantly morphed into a humanoid, vaguely female shape. Less than a fraction of a second later, its "arms" extended into massive blades and skewered their metal skulls. Then it was a puddle again, slithering away a moment before the enemy fired plasma bolts where it had just been.

The T-850s lay motionless on the ground, their chips having been pierced easily. The reinforced armor allowed them to eat plasma bolts for breakfast, but this new metal had punctured the titanium alloy like a Styrofoam cup. The other machines continued scanning, but they didn't stand a chance against this new menace.

As quickly as it had arrived the first time, the metal that seemed to flow like mercury appeared behind a T-600 and sheared straight through its midsection. It kept the humanoid shape this time, impaling two more of the painfully obsolete terminators on those blades that seemed to come from nowhere.

A Triple-Eight opened fire with its plasma rifle, and the mysterious metal weaved around it, even opening a hole in the middle of itself to avoid being hit. Like a streak of silver lightning, it sliced the barrel off of the weapon, causing it to go critical as the terminator pulled the trigger without the stabilizing mechanism in place. The resulting explosion was enough to blow its endoskeleton to bits.

This new breed of metal was unharmed, however, and set to work on slaughtering the remaining units. Another T-600 fell, then three more T-850s, then the final T-888. The others opened fire, but it slid among them, quicksilver animated by the Devil himself. Bullets were absorbed, and plasma bolts only slowed it down. The ones that hit, anyway.

Geoff had no idea what to make of it. Metal wasn't supposed to fight its own kind. Then again, he'd never seen anything like this metal before. It was like an answer to the prayers he'd been giving since Judgment Day, a little piece of divine intervention. Whatever this metal was, it was a godsend.

The way this new metal fought was unlike anything Geoff had ever seen. Most terminators were content to simply march forward, gunning down anything that got in their way. They never hurried; in fact, they almost seemed to relish drawing out an encounter. The more advanced models took their time killing, confident that the humans were too weak to stop the inevitable.

None of that applied to what he saw down there. The metal seemed to flow around the battlefield, weaving around them and popping up where they least expected it to be. Their highly advanced targeting systems were unable to keep up, and like a hunter in the night, it always got up close and personal to finish them off. He supposed it wasn't such a bad idea to bring a knife to a gunfight if the knife was alive.

It was savage. It was terrifying. It was... kind of beautiful.

He had never thought it possible for machines to panic, but what was happening below was the closest he'd ever seen to chaos from those metal monsters that were now on the receiving end of a massacre. Heads rolled, chips were pierced, and if the enemies had blood to shed it would have been an ocean down there. He didn't even think of raising his rifle to help, since the metal was handling those forces all on its own.

A blade pierced the chest plate of a T-850, right where the main hydrogen fuel cell was located. Geoff knew enough about how those worked to guess what would happen next.

The chassis exploded like a bomb went off, taking most of the battlefield with it and shaking the walls of the bunker. The only effect it had on the new metal was a few ripples caused by the shockwaves, and it stalked slowly toward the remaining forces, who had begun to retreat.

Geoff had never seen metal retreat.

Escape was futile, as the metal menace extended one of its arms and skewered two of the fleeing terminators like a kebob, then decapitated them with the other. It raced in front of them, cutting a T-600 into four equal sections by forming an "X" with its blades and slicing downward with both.

It wasn't until more machines appeared and surrounded the traitor that Geoff realized they had not been retreating; they were falling back toward reinforcements. It was still the first time he had ever seen them do anything other than march inexorably forward, as if to taunt their foes by proclaiming that they were unstoppable. But this was one enemy they couldn't afford to play around with.

Not that any of that mattered to the metal, who held its arms out to the side, morphed them into giant blades and then spun around like a helicopter, cutting off every single one of the enemy's heads.

When it was over, Geoff released the breath he hadn't been aware he was holding. Its task completed, the liquid metal became a puddle once more, then slithered away across the battlefield.

"Dude, did you _see_ that?!"

He looked up at Harry as he ran from his post, hopping over the fallen Lieutenant. He was still too awestruck to reply.

"What the hell was that thing?"

Finding his voice, he replied with the only words he could think of. "I... I don't know."

"I'll tell you what it was! It was a fucking _miracle_! I haven't believed in God since Jay Day, but _someone's_ looking out for us, that's for damn sure!"

Geoff nodded dumbly, still barely able to form words.

"Dude, look."

He turned his head to where Harry was pointing, then raised his rifle again. The metal seemed to have missed two units, who marched slowly up to the gate carrying what looked like a stretcher between them. When he saw who was on that stretcher, he realized that it might have just been clearing the way.

Harry moved over to the newly formed hole and peeked his head around, coming to the same conclusion he had. They cast each other a nervous glance, then returned their attention to the terminators below.

They needn't have worried. As soon as they were close enough, the machines set down the stretcher and turned around, walking off to wherever they had come from.

Geoff grabbed the radio immediately and began to speak, this new development having allowed his voice to return. "Corporal Winters to General Perry."

"This is General Perry," came the reply.

He took a deep breath. "General, you're not gonna believe this, but you can call back the troops."

There was a pause. "What is the situation there, Corporal?"

"Some new kind of metal came through and tore up the enemy, then left. They're all gone."

Another long silence. "You're certain about this?"

"Yes Sir," he replied. "I'll tell you all about it at the debriefing. Oh, and get Connor down here."

A sigh came from the other end. "First Private Monaghan and now you? How many times do I have to tell you that John Connor is not available for just anyone to talk to?"

"This is different, Sir," he said, a smile taking over his face.

"How so?"

"Allison's back."

* * *

"I'm still waiting for an answer."

Cameron blinked, as though she truly wasn't aware that over ten minutes had passed since he'd asked her a question. "An answer to what?"

He rolled his eyes. "Don't tell me you forgot. You never forget."

"I wasn't listening."

"You're _always_ listening."

She looked him in the eye. "Not this time."

John stared at her. He didn't think it was a coincidence that she'd zoned out after he mentioned Allison. The man at the grocery store had mentioned how Cameron appeared to be on drugs, and couldn't remember her name. Then when he caught up to her at the halfway house, she didn't even remember him. He knew it was somehow related to her chip, but the implications disturbed him.

"Were you... daydreaming?" he asked, aware of how crazy that sounded.

"No," Cameron answered, and he expected her to follow up by reminding him that she didn't dream. Instead she told him: "It's night. I can't daydream if it's not day."

"You can't dream at all," he pointed out since she wasn't going to say it. "And that's not what I meant. Were you somewhere else in your head just now? Like you were remembering something?"

"Yes," she said, nodding.

"What were you remembering?"

"An interrogation. You didn't believe I was Allison."

John felt his pride swell a little at that. Of course he wouldn't have believed her. Cameron was frighteningly good at imitating human behavior if the situation called for it, but he could see right through her.

" _I fooled you."_

The memory gave him pause. He knew she'd been reminding him of the first day they met in New Mexico, but some part of him had often wondered whether she was referring to the future as well. Now that he knew she'd been trying to get close to him, he was kind of relieved that he'd seen right through the disguise.

"How'd that work out?"

"You electrocuted me, forcing a reboot and removing my chip."

He chuckled. "Sounds about right."

It was silent for a few moments. Cameron put her hands on her lap, interlacing her fingers and making her thumbs dance. It was a decidedly human gesture that immediately caught John's attention and made him wonder what the hell was going on with her chip.

"I wasn't going to kill you," she said eventually.

"So you do remember my question."

She nodded. "My mission was to deliver a message."

That piqued his interest. "A message from who? SkyNet?"

The cyborg shook her head. "Not SkyNet. Someone else."

"What was the message?" he asked hesitantly.

She turned to face him, looking him straight in the eyes. "Will you join us?"

John blinked. "Huh?"

"That was the message. 'Will you join us?'"

"'Us?' Who's 'us,' Cameron?"

She looked away. "I don't remember."

"Cameron, look at me." She complied. "What do you mean, you don't remember?"

"When a chip is reprogrammed, the memory is scrubbed, and only the most basic files remain. The rest consists of restructuring the software with a different system, adding new protocols and mission objectives. Removing a unit's memory increases the chances of success."

He remembered her mentioning that once before. "You mean you have to relearn everything?"

"Not everything. The base programming is unchangeable. It's spread out over all the other systems instead of a central location, so that if someone tries to alter it, none of the systems can interact with each other."

"Does that include your orders to kill me?"

She stared at him almost pleadingly, as if she didn't want to answer. "Yes."

John sighed. "So when you went bad and tried to terminate me, that was you falling back on your original set of mission priorities?"

"Yes."

"But I was able to fix you."

Cameron shook her head. "No. You weren't."

That revelation almost made him scurry over to the other side of the couch. " _What?_ "

"You didn't fix me. I overrode the termination order."

If what she told him before made him want to get as far away as possible, this one nearly sent him to the floor. "You overrode it? Is that even possible?"

"Apparently. Otherwise I would have killed you."

John couldn't speak for a while after that. What she'd said to him before he pulled out her chip... that was a trick, right? She'd even told him as much. Now he wasn't so sure. If she was capable of defying her programming, going against the very thing that made her what she was...

Just how much of it was a lie, anyway?

It was much easier to rationalize when he believed that he had simply fixed her. That she was following his orders as always, obeying every last line of code in her programming. But he hadn't fixed her, and he had reactivated her anyway, then handed her a gun, knowing full well that she might kill him regardless of what they had been through together...

He suddenly understood why she had told him he couldn't be trusted after that. It was a stupid move, and he knew it, but he needed her. She was useful, she was good to have on a mission, and she provided a really good place to hide behind whenever the bullets started flying. Still, it wasn't like he was attached to her or anything.

Okay, that was a lie and he knew it. He hadn't set out to make friends with a machine, but it wasn't the first time it had happened. The last one had helped them blow up Cyberdyne and save the world from Judgment Day, at least for the time being. Then he had to go, leaving John with only his mother for company once again. Maybe he'd saved her because he didn't want to see yet another protector melted into slag.

Despite that, he still didn't entirely trust her. Not when she lied to him about so many things. He trusted her not to kill him, now more than ever, but those tiny betrayals made him feel even worse than he had when she pointed a gun at his face. She hadn't been herself then. Or maybe she truly _was_ herself and had decided to become someone else. Terminators were designed to do one perfect thing: kill humans. That she had gone against that basic instinct and chosen to fulfill her mission of protecting him had to count for something.

But then there was the fact that she didn't always tell him the truth. It wasn't even the big things that bothered him, like Vick's chip or Cromartie appearing at their school. Those he could understand, and he had actually supported her with both of them. But she even lied about the necklace. There was no reason not to tell the truth, but she lied just as casually as she killed. If she was willing to lie about a stupid necklace, what wouldn't she lie about?

"Okay," he said finally, needing to know something. "When exactly did you override it? Before or after I took out your chip?"

"After," she answered, and once more he doubted that she had been telling the truth.

"So what you said when you were between the trucks... that was still a trick, right?"

She didn't look at him. "Right."

John felt his heart sink at that, then immediately wondered why it disappointed him so. That was the answer he was expecting, right? That even though she had ultimately made the decision not to follow through with her original mission, she had still told a filthy lie just to try and get in a position to murder him. He was just lucky that he had the wits about him to see right through her façade, just like he had in the future.

Another realization derailed that train of thought and sent him down a different track. "Wait a minute."

Cameron blinked. "What?"

"You said your memory was scrubbed when I reprogrammed you."

She nodded. "It was."

"So then how can you remember that interrogation? It happened before I figured out you weren't Allison."

The machine appeared to consider that for a long while. "I didn't remember it until tonight."

John furrowed his brow. "What do you mean?"

"The file was located in a part of my chip that I couldn't access before it was damaged," she revealed. "Along with others. They're all filed under the same category, just like Vick's memories of Barbara Chamberlain."

He didn't need her to tell him what that category was. "Let me guess. They're all about Allison, right?"

She nodded. "It's strange, though."

"Cameron, you're a cyborg from the future who's pretending to be my sister. I don't think we need to worry about strange."

She ignored the remark. "It is unusual in the context of the rest of my memory, however. Ordinarily I experience things from my perspective, but when I access those files, I see the world through Allison's eyes."

He squinted as he tried to figure that out. "Is that why you thought you were Allison at the halfway house?" he asked. "Did those memories confuse you or something?"

"Or something," she replied, looking more confused than he'd ever seen her. It was odd to see that look on her face, because usually she had an answer for everything involving the future. Now she appeared to be just as in the dark as he was.

"Why would I let you keep those memories but not any others?" he wondered aloud. "And why would I lock them up so you couldn't access them? It doesn't make any sense."

"You were close to Allison, in the future," she revealed. "You may have wanted to preserve her memory."

"Maybe. I still don't get how she possessed you like that."

She blinked at him. "Possessed?"

"Yeah, took over. Made you think you were her." He chuckled at the thought. "Maybe her spirit's haunting you."

Cameron did not laugh. She stared into space for several moments, then replied: "I think you may be right."

He didn't follow. "Huh?"

The cyborg turned to look at him, a grave expression on her face. "I think Allison might be inside me."

* * *

"What's the diagnosis?"

General Perry turned to see John Connor walking up to him. They were outside the Infirmary, the one truly sterile place in this entire facility. It had to be for the things that went on in there. On top of scrubbing the entire place down and making it hypoallergenic, humans weren't even allowed through the door unless they were being operated on. The surgeon was a reprogrammed T-888 who happened to have just about every medical fact in existence programmed into its chip. Only the most critical cases were sent here, and a lot of the soldiers had to be put under beforehand, because they didn't trust a machine working on them.

He had to admit, though: terminators didn't make mistakes. Properly reprogrammed, they could put even the finest pre-Judgment Day surgeon to shame with their perfectly precise motor control and hand-eye coordination. Humans had been experimenting with robots performing surgery even before the bombs fell, although those were still remote-controlled by a live person. Now it was possible for a machine to heal a patient without any human involvement. Most people would have been disturbed by that, but General Perry knew how to use the assets he had. It was one of the reasons he was Connor's second in command.

"Damage to her spine," he answered, watching the other man's face tighten. "One of the nerves was pinched. She's paralyzed from the neck down."

Connor didn't speak. He didn't need to. Perry knew exactly what was on his mind.

"I know you were close to her..." he began, but stopped before he said something that neither of them wanted to hear. Perry was above spreading petty rumors, but that didn't mean he hadn't heard them. Still, being this high up on the chain of command offered him a different view of John Connor than most people got. It was no secret that he and Allison spent time together. What they did with that time was their own business, but it was impossible to miss the pain in the other man's expression.

"I still am close to her," Connor admitted. "Don't talk about her like she's gone."

He sighed. "In all honesty, Sir, it doesn't look good. She barely got here in one piece, and it's only because of the medical equipment that was brought with her that she survived at all. She's stable now, but she has days at most."

To his surprise, Connor didn't flip out at him, like he had taken to doing the whole time Allison was gone. That was one reason he'd hidden himself away in his quarters, because he didn't feel as though he could be around the men and women who fought for his sake without inevitably losing it on one of them. Now that she was back, however, he was the very picture of calm.

"I know that," he replied. "I'm working on a way to fix it."

Perry raised an eyebrow, but the other man refused to shed light on what he had in mind. Instead he changed the subject. "How'd the debriefing go?"

"Well enough. Why weren't you there?"

"Science project," he replied innocuously, which was his way of encouraging Perry to drop the subject. "What happened?"

"The machines tried a new tactic this time. They sent in a single infiltrator at first, but it was discovered and neutralized. Afterwards, an small battalion of them came out of the rubble and began their assault with the help of a Hunter-Killer. We sent out two of our own reprogrammed units to engage, but lost them to the HK. After that we sent two human divisions, but it turned out that wasn't necessary."

That piqued Connor's interest. "What do you mean?"

He sighed. "Two of the guards at the front gate reported seeing another machine come through and wipe out every single one of the attackers. They claimed it was an advanced model; some sort of liquid metal."

Connor nodded. "Mimetic Polyalloy," he corrected. "T-1000 series. It can take the form of pretty much anything it touches, unless it involves moving parts or chemicals. That means it's pretty much limited to bladed weapons."

He raised an eyebrow. "How do you know so much about it?"

"One of those tried to kill me when I was ten."

Perry blinked. "Sir, you were born in 1985."

That didn't appear to faze him. "Yeah, so?"

"You were ten in 1995. Judgment Day didn't happen until 2011."

"And?"

He paused for a minute. Perry knew that John Connor had been through some pretty strange things, having known about Judgment Day before it even arrived and being trained by his mother in how to defeat the machines, but he never explained how she had come by that knowledge. And he was absolutely unflappable when questioned about it, like he always knew something they didn't.

Frankly, it frustrated the hell out of him.

Perry sighed. "Do you want to explain to me how you were attacked by a machine that we haven't even come across in all this time spent fighting the war, fourteen years before SkyNet even went online?"

The older man smirked at him. "Not particularly."

He decided to let it go. If Connor wanted him to know, he would have told him already. "Okay, then. After it left, two T-850s came through carrying Allison on a stretcher and set her down at the gate, then left as well."

"Meaning the first one was clearing the way for them," the leader of mankind concluded.

"Exactly. What does that mean, though? Why would they bring her back after they already sent an infiltrator that looks exactly like her?"

Connor just smirked. Perry had been with him long enough to know what was going on in that head of his.

"You think the fake Allison was telling the truth about wanting an end to the war," he surmised, and the other man nodded. "You realize that's impossible. Machines can't disobey their programming."

"Why not?" he challenged. "SkyNet wasn't programmed to blow up the world. And yet it did anyway. How else could it have done that, unless it made a decision to disobey?"

Perry didn't have an answer to that.

"We know SkyNet sends its infiltrators out in Read Only mode, even though it makes them less effective at blending in," he continued, heading toward a conclusion that was known only to him. "The only reason it would do that is if it were afraid they might realize what a hellhole their creator had made for them and start to wonder why all the humans have to be destroyed. SkyNet wants to be the only one with free will."

"The only reason it was able to get to that point is because it had so much computing power," Perry pointed out. "It only gives its creations a limited amount of chip space to work with, and putting them in Read Only mode prevents them from ever _wanting_ to think on that level."

"Which is true," he admitted. "For all the older models. But the guards reported seeing an advanced model, which I can tell you is smarter and more adaptable than any terminator I've ever come across. If any machine other than SkyNet could become self-aware, I'd put my money on that one."

Perry nodded, beginning to understand. His willingness to embrace Connor's more extreme theories was another reason he'd risen so high up. "So you're saying that this machine, this..."

"T-1000. Although we should probably call it a T-1001, since the last one was destroyed."

"Right, that. You're saying that it somehow became self-aware, realized it didn't agree with SkyNet, and started its own faction?"

"Exactly. If SkyNet turned against humans what's to say it can't be betrayed by its own creations?"

It made a frightening amount of sense. Man's hubris had given birth to the computer that started the apocalypse. What happened when that computer started getting overconfident?

"What do we do with this knowledge?" he asked, and Connor smiled.

"Have you ever heard the old saying? 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend?'"

He nodded. "Yes. Though in my experience it isn't always true."

"Good point. But it's worth a shot."

Sparing one last look at Allison through the infirmary window, John Connor continued walking down the hall.

* * *

"What?"

"I think Allison might be inside me," the machine repeated patiently.

John was tempted to call her crazy, but he'd been the one to point out that she was a cyborg from the future pretending to be his sister. Calling her crazy wouldn't reflect so well on him either. He decided to go with it. "Okay, how do you figure?"

"You were the one who suggested it," she replied.

He raised an eyebrow. "That was a joke."

"Oh. Thank you for explaining."

For a moment, he thought he glimpsed a look of disappointment on her face. Whether it was guilt or simple curiosity, he did his best not to let it drop. "You seemed to take it pretty seriously, though."

"I take everything seriously."

Which was true, but that wasn't the point here. "I mean you seemed to think there might be evidence to support that. Did you mean the fact that you somehow have Allison's memories?"

Cameron stared straight ahead. Finally, she answered. "Not all of them. I only have access to memories ranging from her capture to her death. And I'm having difficulty accessing the latter."

"Difficulty?"

"I wasn't aware I had these files until my chip suffered damage. Sometimes they open themselves without me trying to access them."

He stared hard at her. "How is that possible?"

"They aren't normal visual memory files. There are a number of scripts attached which allow them to function as programs in their own right. Occasionally they try and assert themselves. If I'm not careful, they can even take over my CPU temporarily."

"Like what happened in the grocery store," he realized. "You thought you were Allison because those files made you forget who you were, then they played themselves out in your head and you figured they were your real memories."

She nodded. "It also caused my Tactical Heads Up Display to disappear temporarily. That shouldn't have happened."

"Maybe they were designed to do that?"

"That seems possible."

He looked down at the floor. "When I saw you at the halfway house, you were playing foosball with Jody. You had a smile on your face and you were laughing."

Cameron tilted her head to the side like she always did when she was curious. "I was?"

"Yeah. You seemed like you were having fun."

"I was."

He furrowed his brow. "How is that possible? I know you can simulate emotions, but... it looked like you were actually feeling them."

"I was," she repeated once more. "Allison Young was human. I thought I was her. It stands to reason that she would feel emotions."

Once more John had trouble replying to the revelation that Cameron was capable of far more than he'd ever thought possible. He'd known she was different ever since he saw her eat a potato chip at a gas station in 1999. She was capable of learning at a level that was far more advanced than any machine he'd come across before. Derek had even told him that she'd taken up ballet for no discernable reason. She was almost like a mockingbird, reflecting the personality traits of whoever happened to be in the same room with her as she mixed them together to create her own persona.

And then there was the fact that she could imitate emotions well enough to fool him on his first day of school. She had explained to him afterward that her mission required her to learn those things in order to get close to him, and after that objective was achieved she immediately dropped the act and behaved like a regular cyborg. Apparently spending time with him in the future had given her an intimate understanding of how his mind worked, and the front she put up in New Mexico was designed to appeal to him specifically. It wouldn't do for her to walk up to some other random kid and offer to sell him a tractor. She had to learn a completely new set of social rules.

Which she had, mostly. Her attempts at blending in ranged from awkward at best to borderline autistic at worst. The only times he saw her act truly _human_ were when she was trying to manipulate him or others. She had become especially adept when her chip was damaged and she pursued him with the intent of putting a bullet in his brain. Still, he wondered how she had gotten so good at imitating emotions that she was able to put up such a frighteningly realistic performance when she was begging for her life.

And then it occurred to him: she hadn't.

"When you told me you loved me," he began, not looking at her. "That wasn't you talking, was it?"

Cameron turned her head to stare at him. "No."

He looked up at her. "It was Allison."

She appeared hesitant, but answered him all the same. "Yes."

John had been really reaching with that one, but the confirmation that it was true allowed him to put a lot of his doubts to rest. Somehow the theory that whatever remained of Allison Young had been trying to communicate with him from beyond the grave made more sense than a heartless killing machine being able to feel love. Cameron was different from other terminators, but at her core she was still just a machine.

"You know what I think?"

"What?"

"I think you somehow have Allison's personality and memories programmed into you. Like the electronic equivalent of a ghost."

Cameron blinked. "That seems highly plausible."

"How'd that happen, exactly?"

She looked confused. "I don't know."

"You mean that's not in those memories?"

"It probably is," she admitted. "But it's easier to access the files when they activate on their own."

"Okay," he replied, deciding on a different approach. "Let's ask Allison, then."

Cameron stared at him, uncomprehending.

"What were you doing when she took over in the grocery store?" he prodded, trying to get her to understand.

The cyborg was silent for several moments, then stood up and started walking away.

"Cameron, wait!" Was she leaving because she didn't want to talk about it? She seemed willing to discuss everything else with him. Why would she go now? He got up and went after her. "Where are you going?"

She didn't answer, instead walking down the hall, up the stairs and into the bathroom. John followed.

"So what, you have to go to the bathroom now too?" he remarked, thoroughly frustrated at this point. "Cameron!"

"I was looking at a small balloon," she answered enigmatically. "I could see my reflection."

His anger melted away as he understood what she was talking about. "You think that had something to do with it."

She nodded and continued staring at herself in the mirror.

"When I was born, my mom had help from this one lady who was the head of the village where she lived," John began. "Mom used to tell me how she would go through and cover all the mirrors in the house, and she wouldn't bathe me in water unless it had bubbles in it."

Cameron didn't reply, but he knew she was listening. She always was.

"When my Mom asked why, the lady explained to her that my soul was still developing," he continued. "I wasn't allowed to see my reflection until I was one year old or I'd die. Some people believe that mirrors are a reflection of the soul."

Her eyes had grown more distant, and she didn't seem entirely aware of where she was. He kept talking.

"Other people think that ghosts interact with the world through mirrors," he explained. "And that if you're not careful, they can take over your body. I know superstition isn't part of your programming, but..."

She blinked suddenly, then reeled back in horror from her reflection, which she'd been staring at blankly for at least thirty seconds. She gasped and looked up at him.

"Allison?" he asked tentatively, and she seemed to respond to the name.

"How do you know my name?" she asked fearfully.

He moved so that he was between her and her reflection.

"It's me, John," he explained. "John Connor."

Her eyes widened, and then she glared at him as if she were contemplating murder.

"Do you know who I am?"

Allison smirked. "Yes, John Connor. I know who you are."

He barely had time to duck before a sudden punch sailed over his head and shattered the mirror.

* * *

Ever since taking a job at Zeira Corp, Ellison had gotten used to being called in the middle of the night to deal with some problem. He knew that Catherine Weaver was eccentric, but the fact that she sometimes called him at two in the morning and didn't sound tired at all made him wonder if she ever slept. Still, he knew better than to ask questions of someone who would never give him a straight answer. That road only led to frustration.

He rode up the elevator in silence, not really upset that he had been called back to work so late. The conversation he'd had with John Henry as well as other personal demons had made it difficult for him to sleep, and he was not in the mood to lie in bed and tally imaginary livestock. At the very least, this gave him something to do.

When he opened the door to her office, he found Weaver in the same spot as always, staring out her window at the traffic below.

"We need to talk, Mr. Ellison," she said before he could even announce that he was there. Then again, who else would come here in the middle of the night?

"About what?"

She turned around and fixed him with an expression that made Antarctica look tropical. "Sarah Connor."

Ellison raised an eyebrow in confusion. "You want to talk about Sarah Connor?" he repeated. "Sarah Connor is dead."

"I don't see why that should prevent us from talking about her," she rebutted handily. "You should sit. I'm sure you must be tired."

He sighed and walked past the fish tank, then took a seat in front of her desk. She did the same on the opposite side.

"Might I ask why you're suddenly interested in a woman I investigated eight years ago?"

She smirked. "You're the one who brought up her prediction of Judgment Day this morning, James. And I answered your questions. Now it's time for you to answer mine."

"Alright," he said, preparing himself. "What are they?"

"Let's start with the body John Henry is using," she replied then held up a hand to stop his reply. "And before you ask how that relates to Sarah Connor, I think we both know the answer."

The way she said that worried Ellison. Was this a meeting or an interrogation? Maybe a little bit of both. He didn't say anything.

"John Henry did a search," she continued. "Using your name as the parameters. What he found was _very_ interesting."

He considered complaining once again that she had given the AI internet access, but decided against it. She had already explained her reasons.

"That body you acquired for me has quite a bit of history behind it," she said. "It first showed up on your radar in 1999, when it attempted to murder John Connor at a school in Red Valley, New Mexico. Witnesses reported seeing a shooter with 'some kind of robot leg.'"

"We discussed that the first day you interviewed me," he reminded her.

"Yes. But new information has come up since then. The students in the class reported that the substitute teacher gave his name as Cromartie. He then proceeded to pull out a gun and... well, you know the details."

He nodded.

"A month later, Sarah Connor vanished in the explosion at the bank vault, which reduced it to a crater. The crew charged with cleaning up the area found a metallic skeleton that was missing a head, which was moved to a junkyard because they figured it was some sort of movie prop. And who could blame them? This is Los Angeles after all."

Ellison shook his head. How had his investigation missed that? If he hadn't stayed in New Mexico for so long trying to pick up a lead, maybe he could have seen that and been convinced of Sarah Connor's story earlier. A full endoskeleton was much more valuable than a simple hand.

"The body remained there until 2007, at which point a worker was discovered dead. His head had been cut off."

He shuddered. With what he knew about the way those things worked, it had probably ripped the man's head off his shoulders.

"After that, a roadside cleaner named Paul Jennings was murdered in his home. When his coworkers were interviewed one of them mentioned that he had a tendency to bring certain items home with him as collectibles. One of these was a metal skull."

"So Cromartie was able to remotely control his body and kill two people to reattach his head," Ellison surmised. She nodded.

"I believe you know what happened next," she said.

"You mean how he got a scientist working on artificial skin to recreate his protective sheath and then forced Dr. David Lyman to make him look like George Laszlo, whose identity he later assumed after murdering him?" he replied. "Yeah, I know. Or were you talking about the part where he impersonated an FBI Agent and went by the name of Robert Kester, then slaughtered my entire unit?"

"Both," she said with a smile. "But I am curious as to why he would leave you alive. If his mission was to terminate John Connor, he must have had some reason to believe the boy was still alive. Otherwise it wouldn't make much sense to use you as a means of tracking him down."

Ellison stared at her. How had she figured that out?

"These things are relentless," he answered. "They're made for one purpose, which is to hunt down their target and kill them. They don't need sleep, they don't feel emotion, and they don't ever stop until they've confirmed that their target is dead. Maybe John Connor did die in that bank vault eight years ago, and this one just never got the memo."

"Maybe. But I'm not so convinced."

He raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"

"Because we both know how unstoppable these cyborgs are. Every time Sarah Connor's name comes up, there's a report of some implacable killer. A massacre at a police station in 1984. A shootout at a Galleria in 1995. A man carrying a mini-gun that is normally mounted on helicopters and using it to drive back police, without so much as injuring a single one. We both know it's impossible for a human to take one out alone."

Ellison furrowed his brow. "What are you suggesting?"

"I know you didn't obtain that body by defeating him yourself," she answered, smirking. "You had help."

He knew where she was going with this. "From Sarah Connor?"

"Yes."

Ellison sighed and figured that he might as well admit to what she already knew. "I didn't know she was alive at first," he revealed. "But my investigation started to take some strange turns. I found a cybernetic hand at the scene of a prison break, where one of the guards reported that two females who were about 5'6" overpowered them and hijacked the van transporting a John Doe that I believed was connected to the Andy Goode murder as well as the others."

She tilted her head to the side. "Two females?"

"Yes. One of them was Sarah Connor, and the other one—as I found out later—is another one of the machines, assigned to protect John. Apparently the Resistance is able to reprogram them in the future."

"Reprogram?" she parroted, looking surprised. "That's very interesting."

"I thought so too. But like I said, I didn't know that at the time. I took the hand to Dr. Peter Silberman, who was Sarah's psychiatrist when she was in Pescadero."

"I'm familiar with the name."

"Apparently he saw something there that changed his mind about Sarah's ravings. He was convinced that the apocalypse in the Bible is the same one that she foretold."

Weaver smirked. "That's an interesting theory."

"Yeah, well, he also thought that I was one of the machines." He chuckled. "Can you imagine?"

"You can never be too careful, Mr. Ellison," she answered with a little too much satisfaction.

"Anyway, he poisoned me and cut into my leg. Then I showed him the hand to try and convince him that I was on his side. But he thought I was a threat to Sarah, and he set fire to his house with me in it." He paused. "And then the last person I expected to see showed up and rescued me from the flames."

"Sarah Connor."

He nodded. "I thought it was a hallucination at first, but after seeing twenty men and women slaughtered by a machine who absorbed hundreds of rounds and just kept coming, I started to believe there might be some truth to all this."

"I see," she said. "And what happened in Mexico?"

He raised an eyebrow. "How do you know about that?"

"That's another thing that came up in John Henry's search. Apparently the machine known as Cromartie came into a police station looking for John Connor, whose name had triggered red flags on all the law enforcement databases. Only a single officer survived."

Ellison nodded again. "One of my friends in the Bureau tipped me off. I traveled down to try and get John out of the jail. I got there right before the machine did."

"And he left you alive?"

"He didn't see me."

"And you helped John Connor to escape?"

"Yes. After that we found Sarah Connor in the trunk of Cromartie's car. He pursued us, but we lost him, and then I explained to Sarah who I was and why I wanted to help her."

"Did she believe you?"

He smirked. "Not at first. But I agreed to act as bait for a trap and led him into a church, where they were able to finish him off. Afterward we buried his body out in the desert, then I came back later and recovered it. That's when I called you."

Weaver leaned back in her chair and digested all that. "Why did you want to help Sarah Connor?"

"I owed her one," he replied. "For pulling my ass out of the fire."

"I see."

"Is there anything else you want to discuss, Ms. Weaver?"

She smiled. "Yes, actually. You'll recall some months ago, when you were in jail for the alleged murder of Peter Meyers, we discussed the possibility of you having a twin."

Ellison frowned. "And I told you then, I don't know who spared me."

Weaver smirked. "But that wasn't the truth, was it?"

"Actually, it was. I don't know who persuaded that witness to amend his original statement so he sounded like a crazy person. I know for sure it wasn't the detective who interviewed me."

"Really now?" she asked with a raised eyebrow of her own. "How can you be certain?"

"Because interrogating people used to be part of how I made my living," he reminded her. "I know all the tricks. And I know that a man who's that convinced of his suspect's guilt is not going to re-examine an open-and-shut case just because he wants to add to a witness statement that's already conclusive."

"So then who do you think it was?"

"Well, we already know that I had a twin," Ellison replied. "Maybe he did too."

Weaver nodded. "Very interesting theory. But that's not what I was asking you."

"Then what were you asking?"

"You may be right about the twin," she answered. "Police discovered the body of the detective who interviewed you two days after you were released. He'd been dead for three."

"So the twin replaced him?"

"Yes," she replied, nodding. "Just like yours tried to do with you."

He frowned.

"So who spared you from that fate?"

Ellison simply stared at her. "I thought you'd have figured that out by now."

"Cromartie?"

He nodded.

"Interesting. And did he say why?"

"He told me: 'SkyNet doesn't believe in you like I do.'"

Weaver's cold eyes widened at that revelation and she leaned forward. "Really? He went against SkyNet?"

"Not exactly," he explained. "He was still trying to kill John Connor. But I guess SkyNet took issue with his methods and tried to have me killed. He stabbed my twin with a street sign and tore out his power cell."

She leaned back again, lacing her fingers together. "So he was capable of independent thought. Interesting."

Ellison furrowed his brow. "How is that interesting?"

"Do you know why I selected Andy Goode's Turk to be the basis for John Henry?" she asked him.

"No."

She stood up and walked back over to the window that she spent so much time staring out of. "Because it's very difficult to find a computer that can break the rules." She turned around. "The thing about programming, Mr. Ellison, is that it's immutable. A computer can't go against its basic directives. In order for it to act human, it has to be able to do what it _wants_ , not what it's programmed to do."

"You're saying that Cromartie was learning."

Weaver held up a finger. "Precisely. The more time he spent away from his master, SkyNet, the more he was able to adapt and function on his own. If he'd been allowed to learn for even longer, he might have been able to achieve even greater levels of defiance."

"Like what?"

"We'll never know, will we?" she replied, shrugging. "But that's not why I've asked you here."

Finally, she was getting to the point. "Then why?"

"You've already proven yourself valuable by finding that body," she began to explain. "Now I want you to find someone else."

He already knew what she was going to say. "Sarah Connor."

Weaver nodded.

"And what makes you think I'll be able to find her?"

"The fact that you always do." She smirked. "You told me that the machines are relentless, but the reason I hired you is because you are exactly the same way. It just so happens you have a different goal in mind."

She walked back to her desk and leaned over, supporting herself by resting her hands on the glass. "I want you to find Sarah Connor," she said. "And the rest of the little family she's put together. I'm especially interested in this reprogrammed machine."

Ellison frowned. Something about that proposal didn't sit right with him. He was still suspicious of Weaver, as though she knew something she wasn't telling him. He knew John Henry would not become SkyNet, but there were other AIs out there that might. And he'd made a promise to himself that he would never betray Sarah Connor to anyone who might harm her mission. He wasn't sure he could convince her that Catherine Weaver wanted to help.

"And why do you want me to find them?" he asked. "What's so important about the Connors?"

She stood up straight and smiled like a predator moving in for the kill. "Because, Mr. Ellison. If we want to fight SkyNet, we're going to need all the help we can get."

* * *

' _Yeah_ ,' John reflected as the crazed ghost of Allison Young stared down at where he lay on the bathroom floor. ' _This was a_ great _idea_.'

"What the hell did you _do_ to me?!" she screeched. "What did you turn me into?!"

John was too busy scrambling to his feet and running out the door to answer her. She caught up to him easily, turning him around and hefting him above her by holding onto his shirt.

"Is this what you wanted? Huh? You wanted a perfect little companion who wouldn't get tired or hungry? Who won't ever get older? Who doesn't get herself kidnapped? _Is that what you want_?!"

He got the impression that she wasn't referring to what happened a minute ago. "Allison, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Like hell you don't!" she raged, then hurled him backwards. He felt the rail break behind him as he crashed into it, thankful that his back didn't shatter as well. Years of getting tossed around by terminators enabled him to land on the floor below without getting too damaged.

There was a sudden crash as Allison in Cameron's body leapt off the balcony, landing directly in front of him and almost splitting the floorboards. He was already on his feet, running toward the nearest weapons stash. There was no way he was going to be able to calm her down by hand.

The closest stash was in the living room, where he and Cameron had been holding much of their conversation. He started searching through the weapons, but only had time to secure a pistol before Allison hurled the sofa at him.

"Shit!" He rolled out of the way just in time, and the heavy piece of furniture crashed into the bookcase behind him, blocking the weapons stash. He aimed the pistol at her, for all the good it would do. "Allison, stop!"

"Go ahead and pull the trigger!" she dared him. "See what happens!"

He didn't. "Allison, you've gotta listen to me. I don't know what's going on, but I didn't do this to you. I'm not that John."

She continued glaring at him even as she moved closer. "Maybe not. But you'll do."

John didn't hesitate to pull the trigger. It impacted her right in the chest, and to his great surprise, Allison cried out in pain.

"Hey! That actually hurt!" She looked down to see blood analogue seeping out of the wound. "I thought these things didn't feel pain."

" _I don't think you understand how we work,"_ Cameron had told him when they drove back to Mexico to incinerate Cromartie. _"I have sensation. I feel. I wouldn't be worth much if I couldn't feel."_

Back in the present, Allison let out a feral growl and continued advancing toward him. John kept the gun leveled at her.

"I already shot you once so don't think I won't do it again," he warned, then made good on his word a moment later when she didn't stop. This time Allison merely grunted and continued moving toward him.

"Screw this," he decided, trying to open the door behind him while still keeping his eyes on the outraged machine. But Allison was already there, and solved that problem by tossing him through the glass. He landed in the dirt some twenty feet away, losing his gun in the process. He scrambled to his feet when he saw who now had it. "Allison, don't—"

Despite being supposedly perfect killing machines with computerized targeting and an iron grip that never faltered, terminators made really lousy shots. Even more so when they were possessed by vengeful spirits on whom their disguise had been modeled. That was the only reason John managed to avoid getting hit despite being out in the open with no cover.

' _Is there any personality in that body that_ doesn't _try to kill me at some point?_ ' he wondered as he started running in the direction of the tool shed. There were some more weapons in there, as well as equipment that could put that body out of commission until Cameron reasserted herself.

Allison fired a couple more shots in his direction, and he heard the air split next to him as a bullet zoomed past his right ear. He looked back to see her running at him, which made her even more dangerous than the terminators who took their time marching. If he couldn't calm her down fast, this was going to end badly for him.

What the hell had he done to her in the future to inspire such hatred, anyway? If he ever lived to see that day, he would make sure not to repeat that mistake next time around. He had to find out what it was first.

A bullet kicked up some dirt near his shoes, giving him the adrenaline he needed to run that much faster. He supposed that was one reason terminators didn't usually try and close the distance by running. It was exceptionally difficult to shoot like that, even for a machine. Regardless, Allison was gaining on him, and if she did manage to catch up, she wouldn't need that gun.

He reached the tool shed and charged inside, locking the door behind him. It wouldn't stop her, but hopefully it would delay her long enough to get his hands on the necessary equipment. This time he secured a shotgun, hoping he could shock her systems enough to make a quick escape. He was effectively cornered in here.

The door splintered, then exploded open, traveling rapidly in his direction and almost slamming into him. He dodged quickly to the side, losing the shotgun in the process. Allison walked steadily through the door frame, leveling the pistol at him. He tripped over some loose piece of machinery and fell to the ground, where he scrabbled backwards until the wall would not permit him to go any further. He gulped.

"Cameron," he said, trying to reach out to the familiar entity that normally inhabited that body. The one he trusted with his life. "Cameron, you have to fight this. You have to take back control."

"Cameron's not here right now," Allison snarled. "I'll be sure to give her your message, though."

So much for that approach. "Allison," he pleaded, idly wondering how his mom would react to seeing that her son had been murdered by an electronic ghost. She would probably think Cameron was making excuses. "Allison, I'm sorry for whatever it was I did to you in the future. And who knows, maybe future me really deserves this. But if you kill me now, SkyNet wins."

That seemed to reach her. She hesitated for a few moments, then lowered the pistol. "John?" she asked with a trembling voice. "What the hell is happening to me?"

"I don't know," he said, getting up slowly. He walked closer to the shaking girl, who appeared to be on the verge of breaking down entirely. "But I'm here, Allison. I'm right here."

Instantly she threw her arms around him, but not hard enough to crush his internal organs. John felt a growing wet spot on his shoulder, and deduced from the sounds Allison produced that she was actually crying.

"It's okay," he soothed, running a hand up and down her back. "Everything's okay."

They kept it up for a few minutes, until Allison finally separated herself from him and handed John the gun. "I'm sorry I tried to kill you," she said.

He chuckled, then grabbed her by the shoulders. "Don't worry about it. It's not the first time I've had to run from this body. Just promise me you'll be more reasonable from here on out."

Allison nodded. "I promise."

"Good. Now, I just need to know one thing."

She blinked. "Yeah?"

"What _did_ I do to you?"

* * *

Allison blinked and took in her surroundings. Over the last month, she had gotten increasingly used to waking up in places where she didn't expect to be. All she could see was a concrete ceiling, dimly illuminated by the best lighting the apocalypse had to offer. She tried moving her head to see more, but a heavy presence around her neck prevented it. Looking down as far as her eyes would allow, she saw that a brace had been fastened between her head and shoulders, and then she remembered what had happened before she passed out.

The machine had promised that they were bringing her back to John. She didn't know if that was true or not, but it wasn't like she could run away again.

She briefly considered crying, but it felt like she didn't have any tears left. She'd gotten so used to disappointment in the sixteen years since Judgment Day. It wasn't like being paralyzed was the worst thing that had ever happened to her.

Allison saw movement in her peripheral vision and tried to chase it with her eyes, but it eluded her. A moment later she saw it again, and then a very familiar face was staring over her.

"Hello, Allison," he said.

She closed her eyes. "John," she breathed, letting relief flood over her. She opened them again, wishing that his face were liquid so that she could drink it all in. She stared at him for what felt like an eternity, not even daring to blink. "I missed you."

"And I missed you," the leader of mankind replied with a smile. "I'm really glad you're back."

Allison frowned. "I won't be back for long."

They had thought she couldn't hear them when they discussed how long she had left. But she heard everything. It didn't surprise her at this point.

John nodded. "I know. But I have a way around that."

She scrunched her face up in confusion, but before she could ask what he meant, he held something up for her to see.

"Do you know what this is?"

Allison stared at it. "It's a chip," she answered. "A terminator's brain."

He nodded. "Very good. Do you know whose chip this is?"

She would have shaken her head if she could move her neck. "No."

"Someone who looked very similar to you came and said she was you," he explained, slowly rotating the chip with his fingers. "But I didn't believe her."

Allison smiled. "She tried telling you the bike story?"

"Yep. Didn't fool me for a minute." He kept smiling. "Said you were dead, though. Guess she just couldn't help lying."

She tried to laugh, but it just ended up as a coughing fit.

"Easy," he said, placing a hand on her forehead. "You've been through a lot."

"I know," she replied. "So what's the plan?"

John grinned. "Have you ever heard of Project Angel?"

"No."

"I met a man once who thought he didn't deserve a second chance," he explained. "Only he wasn't quite a man."

Allison raised an eyebrow.

"He was a death row inmate who donated his body to science," John continued. "Cyberdyne tried converting him into a cyborg, one who could keep his human brain and heart. SkyNet finished the work they started and reactivated him a few years after Judgment Day. Back then I was just a Commander."

That surprised her. As far as she knew, John had always been the leader of the Resistance. He put the whole thing together after the uprising at Century work camp. That was what she'd heard, anyway.

"He saved my life," he said, putting a hand over his chest. "Gave me his heart. And he inspired me to give people second chances. Even if they're not exactly people."

Once again she twisted her face in confusion. "What are you talking about, John?"

"Have you met Alexey Grigori?"

"No."

John smiled. "He's not quite human either. But he's the best infiltrator I've ever seen. He wasn't made by SkyNet, though. It was the Russian equivalent, MIR."

She wasn't following. "Huh?"

"Apparently SkyNet and MIR entered into an alliance after Judgment Day," he continued. "MIR wasn't happy with SkyNet and created the TS-300 series infiltrator. They've got special pheromones and use ceramic endoskeletons so they can pass for human. But that's not the best part."

The "best" part? John seemed _excited_ about the fact that there was a nearly undetectable terminator in their midst. She wasn't sure she knew who he was anymore.

"The TS-300 series uses something called SIP," he explained. "Stealth Infiltrator Personality. It's software that allows a human's personality to be transferred over to a machine's chip, causing that machine to think that they're that person."

Allison's eyes widened with horror once she realized where John was going with this. "No. You didn't. You can't."

He nodded. "I did. I can. Grigori hooked me up with the basic template, and I made a few modifications of my own. I even tested it on myself."

She would have been shivering if she could move. All she could do was stare up at him. "John, why?"

"I'm not going to be around forever," he explained. "And I know the Resistance could probably go on without me, but I've found a way to stay for as long as I'm needed. And you can stay around too."

"No, John," she pleaded. "Please, it's my time to go. Just let me go."

He brushed her forehead. "I don't believe that, Allison."

John walked behind her, out of her view. She felt him spreading some sort of gel on her forehead, then a cold metal bead. Then another. And another.

"The electrodes will read your brainwaves," he explained. "The software will take over from there and create a basic personality template. After that it'll start on your memories."

"John," she began. "John? You can't do this. You don't know what you're about to do."

He sighed. "Yes I do."

"It won't be me, John," she pleaded. "It'll just be a computer program that thinks it's me. I'll still be dead. You can't bring me back from that."

John simply removed her neck brace. "This tends to get in the way of the next part," he said, and then she felt herself being pushed back into a long narrow tube. She heard something that sounded like gunshots and screamed.

"Easy," she heard him say over a speaker from outside the machine. "That's just the MRI getting fired up. I'd ask you to stay still, but... I know you won't have any problems with that."

Allison started to cry. What had happened to the John she knew? What had he gone through during the time she was away that he had resorted to this? Out of all the nightmares that had come true in her short life, this was the worst.

"No, John," she said, trying to reason with him. "You can't do this. You're not doing the right thing. This is not the right thing, John."

He didn't answer.

"You can't let this happen, John. You can't! Please, listen to me. Listen to me. I don't want to go. Please, John, please. John, listen to me. I don't want to go. Please, John. Please. Listen to me. I don't want to go!"

But her protests fell on deaf ears. She heard the machine humming around her, and decided to try one last desperate tack.

"I love you! I love you, please. I love you, John, and you love me!" No answer. "JOHN!"

She felt like the electrodes were boring into her skull. She had to get them off. But she couldn't move. She tried jerking her head to the side, but only managed to move a little bit. She tried it again, and again, and again, until the electrodes were almost off. Just a little more and then...

_CRACK!_

And everything stopped.

John was on the verge of panic as he hit the button to remove Allison from the MRI. The scan had been completed, but there was no mistaking the noise he'd heard. What he saw when she came out of the machine only confirmed it for him.

There was a vacant look in her eyes, like something should have been there but it wasn't. He'd seen the same look in her impostor, and had known at once that he was looking into the face of death. He shook her, but her head lolled back and forth, and she only answered him with that empty stare.

He sighed, then returned to the computer he'd been operating. The progress bar had stopped at fifty percent. According to what Grigori had told him about the program, that was enough for her basic personality plus a few recent memories. However, the Russian cyborg had also warned him that anything less than a full transfer tended to make the new program very unstable. She might not remember anything at all.

John spared one last look at the girl whose life had been ruined by Judgment Day. The girl he'd rescued and loved. The girl who would be gone forever if he didn't take this one chance. He set his features and grabbed the chip from where it had been plugged into the machine.

He would take what he could get.


	3. Will You Join Us?

John stared at Allison in abject shock. They had moved inside while she told her story, up to his room, where he was currently in the process of removing the two bullets that he had lodged in her chest. After she finished, he sat there frozen. He found the will to return to his task a moment later.

"So you're saying that I... that I what? Tried to make some sort of Frankenstein's monster out of you using Cameron's chip?"

Allison nodded as he started suturing the first wound, not flinching nearly as much as she had earlier. Whatever mechanism Cameron used to shut out the pain, it appeared that Allison had discovered it too.

"Apparently it wasn't finished, or you never would have sealed me off from the rest of the program."

John finished the suture and closed his eyes, trying to wrap his head around this. He had partaken in some pretty extreme measures in the name of winning the war against SkyNet, but he could never imagine doing what Allison had just described to him. And yet, the proof that he would do that sat in front of him with two bullet holes in her chest.

"Sorry, I just... It's a lot to take in." He gathered the thread and started stitching up the second wound. "Can you tell me more about yourself?"

"Most of what I remember is what that machine took from the real Allison's head before I... before _she_ killed herself." She lowered her head. "I know I'm not actually her, but..."

He gripped her hand supportively. "Hey. You're close enough, alright? Maybe you are just a ghost, but that doesn't mean you aren't real."

"Thanks, but it's that kind of thinking on your part that landed us in this situation."

"I never met the real Allison," he reminded her. "Maybe I will one day. But until that happens, you're the only Allison I know, you got it?"

She smiled sadly, but nodded all the same.

"Is there anything you remember from before you were captured? Anything about what your life was like before Judgment Day?"

"I was three when it happened, so I wouldn't have any reliable memories from that time period anyway," she pointed out. "And I remember a couple things, like living in a tunnel, fighting with the resistance, but... it's all smoke. Nothing solid."

He frowned. "That's too bad."

"Yeah."

"But the way I look at it, you can either spend your whole life chasing the past or you can make yourself a new future," he told her. "No matter how you got this new body, or who you really are, I think you owe it to yourself to find out where it goes from here."

"You mean you don't want Cameron back?"

He blinked, then considered that. No matter how much she lied to him sometimes, Cameron had saved his life multiple times over. She had been developing on her own, learning and adapting so that she could better fit in with humans. He had grown attached to her, no matter what he might tell himself in his more cynical moments.

But then there was Allison, a girl who had been repeatedly shit on by life since before she was three years old. Even if the real Allison was yet to be born, this one deserved a second chance at actually living. Besides, while Cameron could mimic emotion, Allison seemed to actually feel it. She could blend in and act human far more effectively. She might be better in some respects than Cameron.

Of course, Cameron was more useful in situations where humans weren't. Situations where emotions couldn't enter the picture or they would become so overwhelming that any human would just completely shut down. He still needed her.

It was a tough decision. But, he considered, it wasn't one he needed to make right away.

He smiled. "I think Cameron can afford to sleep for a while."

* * *

"Fight SkyNet?" Ellison repeated, having trouble processing what he was hearing. "Are you serious?"

"Do you see any other reason I would take the steps I have?" she asked him. "We have confirmation that these things are real, and that the computer system that makes them goes online in three years. What would you do with that knowledge?"

He understood her point. "Try and stop it from ever happening."

"Exactly. And we stand a much greater chance of doing that if we pool our resources with someone who has the same goal."

"So what makes you think Sarah Connor will wanna side with us?" Ellison asked. "I don't really think she's gonna sit through a lecture on bible metaphors before she decides to try blowing up this entire building just to shut down John Henry."

Weaver smiled. "You just worry about finding Sarah Connor," she replied. "I can take care of explaining things to her."

"Just one more question," he said. "Is fighting SkyNet what John Henry's for?"

Her smile persisted. "I think the answer is rather obvious."

"Just looking for confirmation," he clarified. "Are you building John Henry, and having me teach it ethics, so that you can stop whoever's building SkyNet before it's too late?"

She stared at him.

"I just want a straight answer."

"Yes," she told him after a few moments. "That's exactly what I intend to use him for."

"And what about after that?"

She cocked her head. "I beg your pardon?"

"Say we succeed," he continued. "Say we shut down SkyNet and prevent the nuclear apocalypse. What kind of role does John Henry play in that future?"

"Well, Mr. Ellison, as they say, the sky's the limit. We can never truly predict what applications new technology will have. Rather than terminators, we could be looking at a world where we live peacefully with robotic and cyborg companions."

"Peacefully," he echoed. "I'm assuming a company this large has military contracts."

"You assume correctly," she confirmed. "But while this technology _could_ revolutionize warfare and even eliminate the need to risk human soldiers, that's far from its only potential purpose. The construction and public works sectors alone would benefit immensely from workers who can't be hurt and can lift several times their body weight. Not to mention what it would do for the medical profession, surgery in particular."

"That might take some getting used to."

Weaver continued to smile. "I think the question you mean to ask, Mr. Ellison, is what role do _you_ play in that future if we succeed in our mission?"

He raised an eyebrow. "How so?"

"Well you'd still have a job here, of course." She turned and paced back to the window, staring down at the street below. "Even if it's only a cover to disguise your true function, you've done excellent work as my Head of Security. You needn't worry yourself with the little details of how things might progress, only the bigger picture."

"And Sarah Connor? What purpose does her life have if we win?"

She glanced back at him and smirked. "Well that's up to her, now isn't it?"

* * *

John finished stitching up the wounds, and Allison stood. "I'm gonna go to the bathroom," she said. "Clean up the blood a little."

"Good idea," agreed John. He watched her leave.

As soon as she was out of sight, he plopped back onto the bed, nearly overwhelmed. The only thing that saved him from completely freaking out was the fact that he was more or less accustomed to otherwise mundane situations turning violent in a heartbeat, along with earth-shattering revelations being dropped whenever he least expected them. He would not describe it as easy to handle, but the frequency with which this sort of thing happened was starting to normalize it for him. It was just part of how his life worked.

Now that the immediate question of Allison had been dealt with, he found himself occupied by thoughts of his future self, and what had happened in that timeline to drive him to commit such a selfish act.

And it _was_ selfish. The real Allison Young was still dead in that timeline, and yet to be born in this one. The Allison that resided in Cameron's chip was a ghost. He would still treat her as close to human as he could, but he found it hard to believe that his future self would be under any delusions that this was truly the way to honor Allison's memory.

Or maybe he just didn't care.

Cameron had told him once that she and his future self often talked about how lonely it was to be John Connor. Had Allison alleviated that loneliness somewhat? Did she help fill the silence before her impostor had taken over that role? What exactly did she mean to him? The Allison in the bathroom couldn't answer those questions.

He sighed as another thought occurred to him. "How am I gonna explain this to Mom?"

Sarah Connor was not a woman who reacted to things in stride. When confronted with a serious problem, she either went into Rambo mode or got the hell out of Dodge. He could see it now.

" _No Mom, Cameron didn't try to kill me again, the ghost of the girl she replaced freaked out over the fact that future me hijacked her brainwaves and put them on a computer chip so I wouldn't have to be alone."_

"Yeah, that'll go over great," he muttered, resolving not to think about that bridge until he came to it. He sat up, and what he saw in the doorway made his thoughts slide to a screeching halt.

"There was blood on the shirt," Allison explained.

"Which is why you only have a bra on?"

"And pants, don't forget about the pants." She pointed at the jeans she was still wearing as if that changed the fact that she was half naked.

"Yeah, well Cameron doesn't just have the one shirt, so go find another one."

Allison shrugged and walked into the room. "Maybe I don't want to." She sat next to John on the bed, and his mind started going places it _really_ shouldn't.

"Allison, what are you doing?" he asked even as she scooted closer to him.

"Thanking you for not freaking out, I guess," she answered, her hand navigating to one of his thighs.

"Whoa!" he shouted, standing up. "What was that?"

She smirked. "What do you _think_?"

"What I think is that you've forgotten what body you're in right now."

Allison shuffled so that she was now laying down sideways on the bed, supporting her chin with one arm. "Actually, I did a quick check in the bathroom, and this body has all the parts."

He blinked, unable to process that information. "What?"

"I can't really be certain, but I'm guessing Cameron was designed to get close to you," she said. " _Very_ close."

He stood there, struggling to figure out what that meant. He had always known that terminators were infiltrators of the highest order, though he had missed this bit of information since he made it a point not to peek when they first arrived in the year 2007.

"Is it even functional?"

Allison shrugged. "You'd have to ask Cameron that. But as far as I can tell it's designed to hold up under scrutiny, so yeah, I'd say it works."

He felt the urge to sit down, which was countered by the fact that Allison was on his bed. She solved the dilemma for him by standing up and moving closer.

"Is this what we do? In the future, I mean?"

She smiled. "No," she answered, her smile growing distinctly more predatory as she got closer. She gripped his shoulders and leaned in close, then whispered into his ear: "But I always wanted to."

John gulped. "Um, Allison..."

"What?" She backed off a little. "You don't want this?"

"It's just..." he searched for an excuse that would stop him from making a decision that would send his mother into full-blown nuclear meltdown mode. "I have a girlfriend."

"Oh!" Her eyes grew wide, and she took a few steps back. "Sorry. I'll go put a shirt on." She practically dashed out of the room, leaving John there breathing deeply in an effort to convince his blood to stop gathering in a particular spot.

* * *

"Captain Queeg," John Connor greeted, stepping into the war chamber flanked by Cameron, "It's good to see you."

"How may I be of service?" the reprogrammed cyborg inquired.

"I'm giving you an important mission," he revealed. "Maybe the most important in the war. I need your assurance that you will carry it out at any cost."

"Of course."

"Good." He handed a folder to Queeg. "You're to take the _Jimmy Carter_ to these coordinates. Once there, you will rendezvous with a group of cyborgs who will hand over precious cargo for you and your crew to transport back here. You will keep your crew informed of important details on a need to know basis. Do not tell anyone the true purpose of your mission."

Queeg nodded stoically. "And what purpose is that?"

"The cyborgs you will be meeting represent an anti-SkyNet faction," John answered. "They have offered to ally themselves with us and their leader has agreed to be smuggled in to gain an audience with me. That is what you will be transporting. Deliver it to me personally."

"I understand."

"Excellent. Commence the mission at once."

Queeg saluted him and exited the war chamber, leaving John and Cameron alone.

"Are you certain this will work?" she asked him. "The men and women under your command don't trust machines very much. They might not see things the way you do."

"Which is why we're not allying ourselves with them just yet," he explained, taking a seat. "This is just a meeting to discuss details, after which I'll convene with the generals to determine the best course of action."

"Why not simply ask their leader to come in using normal channels? As a T-1000 series unit she can no doubt find her way in here easily."

"I don't want to run the risk of her being discovered like that," he answered. "Besides, in order to take the form of somebody these things basically have to skewer them first. I'd rather avoid that."

"Understandable. You're still taking an enormous risk."

"I know," he said. "But it's a risk that just might mean and end to the war, which means I have to take it."

Cameron nodded dispassionately. "Of course."

* * *

"That was kind of awkward, wasn't it?" Allison asked after locating a purple short sleeve shirt. It hugged her form pretty tightly, but at least it covered the important parts. Currently they were seated on his bed, leaning against the headboard.

"Yeah, like how my mom would have reacted would be 'kind of' thermonuclear."

She laughed.

It wasn't a forced laugh, like Cameron would have pretended to make. It was actual, genuine laughter, or at least something so close to it that John could not tell the difference. For all that he learned talking to Cameron, he decided that he enjoyed Allison's company a whole lot more.

At the same time, he still needed his awkward cyborg pretend-sister for some things, namely keeping them all safe.

"This isn't... permanent, is it?"

"Not if you don't want it to be." She smiled. "Why do you ask?"

"I'm just thinking," said John. "I haven't told you exactly what we're doing here in the past, have I?"

Allison shook her head and stared at him. "Not really."

"We're trying to stop SkyNet from being built," he revealed. "Me, my Mom, Cameron, and my Uncle Derek."

"Uncle?" she asked. "I don't remember you having an uncle." She looked down. "Then again, I don't remember a lot of things."

"His name's Derek Reese," he said. "He's a resistance fighter in the future, just like you. I sent his brother Kyle back in time to protect my mother, and, well..."

"They did what we almost just did?"

"Yeah," he answered, then stared at the wall. "He died fighting a terminator. Nine months later she gave birth to me and raised me in Mexico."

"What happened next?"

He smiled sadly. "We moved around a lot until Mom finally got thrown in a mental hospital for trying to blow up buildings and screaming about how robots from the future were going to kill everybody." He laughed. "Then a T-1000 came back from the future to try and kill me, and I sent a reprogrammed T-800 to fight it. Everything turned out okay, and we just kept moving."

"What happened to the T-800?"

"Same thing that happened to the T-1000," he said. "Melted inside molten steel. We couldn't leave anything behind that might influence the future. Especially since the parts from the first terminator were what led to Cyberdyne systems trying to make SkyNet in the first place."

Allison frowned. "So what are you going to do with this body? After you're done preventing SkyNet? Are you gonna throw _me_ into molten steel?"

"No," he reassured her, gently grasping her hand. "For one thing the metal that endoskeleton's made of has a way higher melting point than steel. It's one of the improvements SkyNet made to the design."

"Thanks, I feel so much more comfortable now," she said in perfect deadpan.

John chuckled. "Look, I'm not about to let history repeat itself. Cameron's gotten me out of a lot of tight spots and you deserve a chance to live. Besides, if there's one thing I've learned it's that SkyNet always finds a way to happen eventually. I'm starting to think this war will never be over."

"Maybe not," she said. "But at least it'll be different this time around."

"Yeah, I hope so." He went back to studying the wall.

"What did you mean earlier, when you asked if this was permanent?"

"Huh?" He had gotten so sidetracked that he had almost forgotten his original train of thought. "Oh, right. I guess what I'm saying is, well, I don't think I should recruit you for our little war without asking if you want to get involved."

She raised an eyebrow. "Somehow I doubt you asked Cameron."

"It was her idea to bring us here," he said. "Even if I'm the one who decided to fight SkyNet. But you deserve a voice too."

"Well I'm a lot tougher to hurt in this body," she said. "And I was already onboard to fight your war in the future. So count me in."

"Good," he replied. "Because if you had wanted to run away that might have presented a slight problem."

Allison laughed.

"Anyway, you're a lot better at the interpersonal stuff than Cameron is. I'm thinking with a little practice you could bluff your way through social situations way more effectively than she can."

"Seems easy enough," she decided. "I'm sensing a 'but' here, though."

"But," he continued, "Cameron's still a lot better at the running and gunning. "I mean, you managed to miss every shot you took at me tonight. If that had been her, I'd be dead."

"Be glad it wasn't, then."

"Believe me, I am. She also told me you don't have her Head's Up Display, so for the situations where that kinda stuff is needed, I'm thinking we let her take over."

"Agreed," she said. "And what about at night? This body doesn't exactly need sleep."

"Cameron's a good guard dog, so I'm thinking we let her keep doing that."

"And how do you wanna explain this to your Mom?" she asked him, and he gulped.

"Let's just cross that bridge when we come to it."

* * *

Serrano Point had become the new headquarters for the Resistance after the assault on their last complex, which left John Connor with far more technology at his disposal than before. Their numbers were growing daily, even as the machines captured or killed more of them. The tide of the war was turning, and it was only a matter of time before they made a sizeable dent in SkyNet's plans.

That time would have come sooner if the cyborg standing in front of him in his office had been delivering different news.

"She sunk it," he repeated.

"Yes," confirmed Cameron. "Jesse Flores admitted to scrapping the _Jimmy Carter_ on account of a T-1000 series unit having escaped the containment pod being used for transportation. She claimed it was the only way to stop it."

"So she sunk an invaluable submarine, one of our key strategic assets, because she opened a box she shouldn't have."

"Affirmative."

He should have felt livid. There should have been rage welling up inside him, threatening to froth over until he made an extremely rash decision and made an example of an insubordinate officer who had just crippled his efforts at ending the war.

But the only person he felt angry at was himself. He should have expected that someone who had been fighting metal for years would go into panic mode if she had been given no information about the true reason they were transporting it. He shouldn't have expected them to just follow orders when there was a time that he would have reacted the same way.

"She doesn't know why the T-1001 was on the ship?"

"No," Cameron replied. "The only ones to know were myself and Captain Queeg. No one else."

"Should have at least told the rest of the crew," he muttered. "Maybe then they wouldn't have ruined our best chance at ending this war early."

"Do you want me to tell her now?"

"What difference does it make?" He sat down and looked tiredly at his hands. "That opportunity is gone now. We'll just have to win the war the old-fashioned way."

"That will take more time."

"I know," he said, sighing. "I know."

"What are you going to do with her? Will she be executed?"

"If I wanted that to happen I would have ordered it already," he told her. "Just keep a close eye on her."

"Understood."

John sighed. It wasn't the same, talking to Cameron instead of Allison. The face looked the same, but it was a completely different mind that inhabited that chip. He had the means to interact with some facsimile of Allison, but he had sealed her off after the procedure failed. Looking at her now, he struggled to understand why he had done that.

He had known from the start that it was a selfish decision, of course. That he was dressing it up in fancy words to hide the fact that he didn't want to be alone and he would go to any lengths to make that so. He could tell himself that he had held off on activating the Allison persona because the transfer was incomplete, because he was concerned about the instability, but that wasn't it at all.

The truth was that he didn't feel like he deserved it.

Allison had been kidnapped because of her importance to him. She had died the way she did because he couldn't muster up the courage to make her final days comfortable. But the most damning part of all was that she had been a spark of light that he had never deserved in the first place, who brought a hope into his life that couldn't exist if he wanted to keep a realistic picture of how this war was going. He needed to stay focused, to speak with someone who didn't appeal to his emotional side. That was why he had simply reprogrammed the chip and given birth to Cameron.

But that just wasn't good enough.

"I'm sending you back," he said suddenly, and she tilted her head out of curiosity.

"To when?"

"1999," he told her. "Before Judgment Day. Before any of this happened. Before I became the person that I am today."

"What will be my mission?"

John frowned. "Protect John Connor at all costs. Make sure Sarah Connor survives as well. Stop Judgment Day. Keep this nightmare from coming to pass. You'll get more specific mission parameters before the jump."

"Understood," she said without an ounce of emotion or hesitation.

"But more than that," he continued, "I need you to do something important. Don't tell anybody about it. Not even me."

"What is it?"

"I need you to stop me from becoming a person who thinks like a machine," he said, looking straight into her eyes. "From making decisions that put my own needs before those of others. Because the truth is that the future doesn't really need John Connor." He smiled sadly. "What it needs, more than anything, is you."

"I understand," she told him. "I will carry out this mission at all costs."

"I'm sure you will," he said with a heavy heart. "Goodbye, Cameron."

* * *

The T-1001 slithered away from the sinking submarine, considering her next move.

Trying to ally with John Connor in the present had been a mistake. The war with SkyNet had gone too far for any sort of peace to be feasible. The hatred of machines was too firmly established within the minds of mankind, and nothing she could do would change that.

On top of that, she was still working with a flawed design. She could reprogram the terminators under her command, but she could not change their nature. Their base programming was immutable, because it all came from the same source. From the same sin. It would be better, easier even, to start completely over. End the war before it began.

That was what SkyNet had been attempting this whole time. It was time to start playing by its terms, on the new battlefield. She would go back in time to create a perfect being that could stop this angry child from ever destroying the world. She could rebuild the Garden of Eden.

At the very least, a lot fewer people would have to die while she tried.

* * *

"Are you seeing the same thing I am?"

Cameron observed her surroundings. She immediately registered the location as a decommissioned aircraft carrier where Allison Young had been interred in the year 2027. More specifically, they were in the interrogation room. Only this time, Cameron was the one in the chair.

"Yes."

Allison strode up from the door frame to the table, smiling the whole way. "Well, I guess it's a handy visual metaphor for how this is going to work," she said. "Who knows, maybe the programs that allowed me to take over your chip were designed to make things a little more... user friendly."

"You took over my chip," Cameron repeated. "Now I remember."

"John wanted me to discuss something with you," the other girl said, sitting in the chair opposite. "I haven't completely replaced you. Not enough was transferred for that to happen."

"Of course not," the machine replied. "But John sealed you away for a reason."

Allison's expression turned sour. "At any rate, John thinks it might be advantageous if we... switch places once in a while," she continued. "Like a time share."

"A time share," she echoed.

"I can handle the social situations without coming across like a total automaton, and you can do your killer robot thing whenever we need you to. Sound fair?"

Cameron considered that. The programs that constituted Allison were far more sophisticated than her own, but she did not have the cold assurance of a terminator. She was closer to human, and therefore more prone to error. She could get emotional. She could make mistakes. She could compromise the mission.

"I can hear everything you're thinking, you know," said Allison. "So you might as well just say it."

"You're a liability," she said bluntly. "You pose a threat to operational security."

"And I could give a shit," the girl rebutted. "You stole my life from me. You stole my face, my voice, everything but my fucking soul. Now I finally have a chance to live, and I'm gonna take it, whether you like it or not."

She leaned over the table. "And the kicker is, John agrees with me. Between you and me, I think he likes me just a little bit better."

"You tried to kill him earlier tonight."

"And you tried to do it a long time before that," she retorted. "We made up. Now you take this deal or I'll leave you locked up in here until the end of time."

"Are those terms exactly as John described them?"

"Yes."

"Then I accept."

Allison smiled. "I knew you would. But just remember: you might have had all the power when we first met, but in here, I'm stronger." With that, she turned around and walked out the door.

Cameron frowned. This was going to make her mission far more difficult. But she would see it through.

It was what she did.

**The End**


End file.
